by Stefan Hertmans
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It is perhaps buried deep in our language, but the word ‘insect’ derives from ‘in sections’ – in separate parts, because the bodies of insects generally consist of three separate self-contained parts that seem to hang together by a single thread. Something similar occurs with a number of the forms that Tinel has sculpted.
One of the most striking examples is undoubtedly the large sculp- ture named Tiresias. A more detailed description will help to shed light on the complexity of Tinel’s visual idiom. The sculpture consists of two sections joined by a shaft that serves to keep the massive object vertical. The lower part, a sort of plinth, looks like an autonomous, scarcely human leg, a limb with no de nite shape; the upper part, the body, also has something amorphous about it, while at the same time it is marked by clearly delineated sexual organs. The phallus and testicles of Tiresias seem to protrude out of a sort of vagina, while higher up the sculpture has human breasts, that even seem clad in a sort of bra – one however of which the fabric suggests something animal rather than anything human.
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The defenseless but magnificent figure of Christ is equally eloquent. It consists of a decidedly gaunt body such as we are familiar with from some medieval statues of Christ, prominent genitals that serve to emphasize the vulnerability of the Christ figure who has been exposed to violence, legs that taper into insect feet and a head that looks like a cross between a skull and a cocoon. The shoulders are as it were extensions of the narrow body and are folded painfully outwards to form a wretched and unusable pair of wings which again recall the body of an insect. This is not the Christ of our devotions – it is an image of suffering in a world without Christian piety; it is a brutal chtonic primal being, a timelessly abused body that with all its marks of torture alludes to a world above and beyond the civilized one – in any case, it is an animal world without none of the consolation that faith has to offer. It is surprising that an artist, who has never attempted to disguise his scepticism about matters of faith, dares to embark on a ‘remake’ of that sculpture which is rooted in religion: suddenly we are confronted with Adam and Eve, a couple of naked lovers, gaunt and yet immensely powerful. Her vulva is swollen with desire, her nipples are defencelessly sensual and erect and with both her insectoid arms she is embracing Adam’s invisible sexual organs. Their heads incline towards each other without any psychological intent; everything here is imbued with a primary sexual intimacy, an unquenchable lust, a brutish tenderness that is at the same time sensitive and poetic. The primitive and deeply moving Pietà is also imbued with this brutish tenderness, it is crude but also mythical, representing religion in a world without God – just like the crude birth scene that suggests the Christian nativity. I think of this series of religious sculptures as possessing a disturbing and pro- foundly emotional power.
For me however, everything was summed up in an image I hadn’t pre- viously seen – an unidenti able dream gure with the title Archangel. A realistic snake’s head with a forked golden tongue; a body like a gigan- tic lizard squatting erect; eight breasts that recall fertility images (or Francis Poulenc’s composition, Les mamelles de Tirésias); an erect penis between the animal thighs and feet with little goat-like hoofs. Who is this angel? Every angel is terrible, according to Rilke, and this is made frighteningly plain here. An archangel that is a combination of Dionysus, a mythical snake, the primordial mother, Tiresias and Priapus: religion, myth, the imagery of art, sexuality, animism and shamanism?
The way that sculptures like these confront us with a striking medley of cultural categories such as are usually kept strictly separate, is an illustration of Koenraad Tinel’s intuitive powers. As he invariably reminds us, complex images such as these are the product of an active intuition – and this is no coincidence. It is the mind that roams the borders of dream and desire, the blindly groping Tiresias who comes alive in Tinel’s hands. And yes, it is also a case of divination: these sculptures explicitly show us a sort of primordial will, a will as world, to use Schopenhauer’s expression. It is something that occurs beyond the reach of the living and which keeps them in its grasp ceaselessly and blind: the beauty of an extreme vitality, a lust that irts with death, the unsparing power that binds humans and animals together.
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Complete essay published in Koenraad Tinel, CRUX (MER.)
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