Michiel Ceuler "Des malentendus et le temps perdu"
Ana Cristea gallery
This event has ended.
Ana Cristea Gallery presents the first solo show in the United States of the Belgian artist Michiel Ceulers (born 1986). As an artist, Ceulers concentrates on the bare essentials of painting: canvases and wooden panels, paint and spray paint. Ceulers is entirely committed to painting as an ongoing art form, saying in an interview that painting "has been declared dead a few times, but still many people consider painting the most relevant medium." Part of the impulse associated with the logic of chance the artist submits his canvases to can be seen as an attempt to move beyond from the boundaries of painterly tradition. As a result, the artworks' origins are not only painterly, they are also conceptual. As stated in the artist's own words, his "paintings are the result of events that form a chain reaction, so in a way they are larger than the canvases themselves - they are spatial." Thus, true to himself, Ceulers maintains steady ground, balancing the idiosyncrasies of his practice against the tradition of modernist paintings, which he clearly belongs to.
Ceulers mainly paints abstractions. But he uses words, rather than numbers, in his titles--to help viewers decipher some of the ideas he is playing with. Several titles originate with Kant, some are lyrics from songs. This combination of high-mindedness and lack of pretension add to the works' whimsy. As for the paintings themselves, he is decidedly exploratory in his process. His practice thus is informal on several levels without succumbing to an overly ad hoc, limited expressiveness. Many of his works involve tight grids; these bear some resemblance to Yayoi Kusama's infinity net paintings. But Ceulers' efforts are not characterized by obsessiveness. He is remarkably inventive within the medium he has chosen, mixing planning with chance and furthering the tradition of contemporary painting.
Michiel Ceulers lives and works in Brussels and Berlin.
Media
Schedule
from February 23, 2012 to March 31, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-02-23 from 18:00 to 20:00