Marilyn Minter (1948, USA) is one of the most provocative and influential contemporary artists of our time, known for her raw, hyperreal explorations of beauty, power, and desire.

Working across painting, photography, and video, she challenges conventional aesthetics by fusing glamour with grit, seduction with subversion.

Drawing from fashion, advertising, pornography, and art history, Minter’s work examines the way pleasure, femininity, and consumer culture collide. Her signature style—lush, high-gloss surfaces drenched in sweat, glitter, and condensation—blurs the boundaries between attraction and repulsion, reality and fantasy.

{{images-1}}

Since the 1970s, Minter has been a fearless disruptor, using her art to critique the idealized images sold to us by media and the ways in which women’s bodies are consumed, while also exposing how beauty standards shape cultural perceptions of gender and identity. Whether through her infamous "bush paintings," billboard interventions, or sultry video works, she continuously pushes against cultural taboos surrounding sexuality, feminism, and representation.

Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim, and the Brooklyn Museum, among many others. In 2016, her retrospective Pretty/Dirty cemented her legacy as a pioneer who dares to paint, film, and amplify what others shy away from.

Minter’s art doesn’t just depict beauty—it deconstructs it, reframes it, and forces us to confront our complicity in its construction. Through her lens, desire is never passive—it’s political, electric, and unapologetically bold.

{{slider-1}}

HORST Arts & Music Festival, in collaboration with TICK TACK, proudly presents a monumental new work by Marilyn Minter, one of the most provocative and influential artists of our time. Known for her subversive explorations of beauty, power, and desire, Minter will transform the Engie Electrabel Cooling Tower into a larger-than-life, immersive visual experience, challenging conventions of femininity, glamour, identity and public space.

Minter will develop an entirely new site-specific piece, merging adaptations of her (existing) video works, raw and unpublished materials, expanding her seductive yet subversive language into an entirely new visual format. This collaboration marks a new chapter, translating her distinctive visual language to a architectural scale, playing with the ephemeral and the monumental, the intimate and the overwhelming. As the cooling tower becomes her canvas, Minter’s art will not just be seen, it will be felt, a raw and visceral experience at the heart of HORST’s evolving artistic landscape.

Executed in collaboration with Beam Inc. and 3Made AV, the projection will harness seven state-of-the-art beamers delivering 350,000 lumens of light power. 

Special thanks to Engie, City of Vilvoorde, Beam Inc. and TICK TACK for making this visionary project possible.

This project is curated by ​​​​​​​TICK TACK is a leading contemporary art space and audiovisual platform based in Antwerp, Belgium, dedicated to producing, presenting, and promoting cutting-edge artistic practices through exhibitions, screenings, and off-site projects.

With a strong focus on time-based media and site-specific interventions, TICK TACK collaborates with both emerging and established artists worldwide, bringing their work into new and unconventional contexts.

Beyond Antwerp, TICK TACK initiates ambitious off-site projects, such as its collaboration with HORST Arts & Music Festival, where large-scale architectural projections transform industrial structures into immersive environments. Through these initiatives, TICK TACK continues to push the boundaries of contemporary art production, presentation and public engagement.

{{slider-2}}

Marilyn Minter (1948, VS) is een van de meest provocerende en invloedrijke hedendaagse kunstenaars van onze tijd, bekend om haar rauwe, hyperreële verkenningen van schoonheid, macht en verlangen.

Ze werkt met schilderijen, fotografie en video en daagt conventionele esthetiek uit door glamour te combineren met gruis, verleiding met subversie.

{{images-1}}

Minters werk is gebaseerd op mode, reclame, pornografie en kunstgeschiedenis en onderzoekt de manier waarop plezier, vrouwelijkheid en consumptiecultuur botsen. Haar kenmerkende stijl - weelderige, hoogglanzende oppervlakken doordrenkt met zweet, glitter en condens - vervaagt de grenzen tussen aantrekking en afstoting, werkelijkheid en fantasie.

{{slider-1}}

Sinds de jaren 1970 is Minter een onverschrokken ontregelaar, die haar kunst gebruikt om kritiek te leveren op de geïdealiseerde beelden die ons door de media worden verkocht en de manieren waarop vrouwenlichamen worden geconsumeerd, terwijl ze ook blootlegt hoe schoonheidsnormen de culturele perceptie van gender en identiteit vormen. Of het nu gaat om haar beruchte “bush paintings”, interventies op billboards of zwoele videowerken, ze strijdt voortdurend tegen culturele taboes rondom seksualiteit, feminisme en representatie.

Haar werk is onder andere tentoongesteld in het Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), het Whitney Museum, het Guggenheim en het Brooklyn Museum. In 2016 bevestigde haar retrospectieve Pretty/Dirty haar nalatenschap als een pionier die durft te schilderen, filmen en uit te dragen waar anderen voor terugdeinzen.

Minters kunst beeldt niet alleen schoonheid uit, maar deconstrueert het, herkadert het en dwingt ons om onze medeplichtigheid in de constructie ervan onder ogen te zien. Door haar lens is verlangen nooit passief, het is politiek, elektrisch en ongegeneerd brutaal.

{{slider-2}}