Sarah Lucas in SUSPECTS - Van Gogh, Tricksters & Co.

SUSPECTS – Van Gogh, tricksters & Co.

draws inspiration from the behaviour of those great disruptors known to anthropologists as ‘tricksters’. Found in the myths of every civilisation, these cunning jesters, scoundrels, or mocking wits serve to release the community from suffocating convention and to challenge accepted truths.

The exhibition thus highlights the audacity of artists who, after Vincent van Gogh and up to the present day, have chosen dissidence over conformity and excess over restraint. Whether transgressors, acerbic dissenters, provocateurs, or outcasts, their work bears witness to a spirit of freedom and insolence – though a bitterness that is more poetic than parodic sometimes lurks behind it.