White Cube
London
48 Hoxton Square
+44 (0)20 79305373 FAX +44 (0)20 77497470
WEB
Raoul De Keyser
dal 16/4/2002 al 25/5/2002
+44 (0) 20 7749 7476 FAX +44 (0) 20 7749 7470
WEB
Segnalato da

Sophie Greig - White Cube


approfondimenti

Raoul De Keyser



 
calendario eventi  :: 




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.


comunicato stampa

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

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dal 1/6/2015 al 17/7/2015

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