Raoul De Keyser
dal 16/4/2002 al 25/5/2002
Segnalato da
16/4/2002
Raoul De Keyser
White Cube, London
White Cube is pleased to present a selection of new paintings by Belgian artist Raoul De Keyser. De Keyser paints mostly modestly-scaled canvases that employ a sophisticated language of abstraction. Gestural and subtle, his work is both suggestive and emotional.
Across
White Cube is pleased to present a selection of new
paintings by Belgian artist Raoul De Keyser. De Keyser
paints mostly modestly-scaled canvases that employ a
sophisticated language of abstraction. Gestural and subtle,
his work is both suggestive and emotional.
All-over surfaces
are layered or washed with muted tones and organic, primal
shapes - grids, lines and strokes - seem to surface through
the painting process itself. This exhibition will include four
new paintings and a selection of watercolours.
Born in 1930, De Keyser's painting career began in the
1960s and, like many artists of his generation, he
responded to the developments in American modernism
from the energetic painting of Abstract Expressionism to the
reduced surfaces of Minimalism.
These two strands have
continued to influence De Keyser's work, but over his
forty-year career, De Keyser has developed his own very
personal, painterly language. His focus is on a bleached-out
aesthetic, but unlike the work of fellow Belgian painter, Luc
Tuymans, with whom he is often coupled, his paintings are
insular and inward looking, an exploration on the surface of
the canvas itself rather than an investigation into particular
histories or narratives.
The starting point for De Keyser's work is often
autobiographical, but through the picture making process,
the meaning of the image becomes hidden and oblique.
Although consisting of disparate marks, De Keyser's
paintings cohere through their overriding internal dynamic,
and careful balance of chromatic tones. In this show, De
Keyser will present four small works that are tonally similar
in muted oranges and browns. 'Across 2 (Avond)'
(2000-2001) is an abstract canvas with floating lozenge
shaped areas against a vibrant burnt orange background.
Another work, entitled Across '4 (Zonder)' (2002) represents
a large, rectangular orange area inset with a slim area of
dark forest green and a white square.
Characteristic of De
Keyser's works, this picture seems to be both
semi-representational - it could be the façade of a
modernist house - and also purely abstract, a study of shape
and form, with its own spatial depth and surface.
In all of De Keyser's work, the compositional dynamic and
entry and exit points in the canvas are key. In his work
'Closerie V' (1998), for example, a painting of a set of
Venetian blinds, the linear space between the two series of
horizontal stripes of the blind's slats, becomes the focus of
the entire painting, providing a gap or fissure which lends
the picture surface its energy, an incompleteness which is
an activating factor in the mind of the viewer. Likewise, De
Keyser often pushes his compositions to the limit, with a
series of diffuse, all-over strokes.
This apparent looseness
of syntax creates a kind of inflection and nuance, inviting
and sustaining multiple possible interpretations. Shapes
emerge and recede, like, for example, in his painting
'Untitled (Suggestion)' (1995) where a series of purple
smudges floating against a washed lilac ground suggests a
suspended pair of legs, an absent and cropped bodily form.
Other canvases hint more precisely at immediate,
architectural or domestic surroundings such as the branches
of trees or a flight of ascending stairs depicted in 'Untitled'
(1998).
Although De Keyser' employs a process of reduced
mark-making (in works such as 'Over' (1992), the canvas is
covered with barely visible white strokes on a rich dark
brown ground) it is the points of erasure, like in the abstract
canvases of Willem de Kooning, that seem to conversely
emphasise the hand of the painter more than the positive
marks themselves.
Raoul de Keyser has exhibited in both group and solo
shows internationally. He has recently exhibited at the
Renaissance Society, Chicago, SMAK, Ghent and Wako
Works of Art, Tokyo. He lives and works in Deinze, Belgium.
Image: Raoul de Keyser, Across 3 (bestemming) 200, 2001 oil on canvas
For further information please contact Alexandra Bradley or
Honey Luard on 020 7930 5373. Open Tuesday to
Saturday, 10am-6pm.
WHITE CUBE
44 Duke Street, St. James’s, London SW1Y 6DD
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7749 7476
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7749 7470