Raoul De Keyser - Works on Paper

ZENO X GALLERY ANTWERP SOUTH

Raoul De Keyser Works on Paper 17 November, 2021 - 22 January, 2022

Zeno X Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition Raoul De Keyser: Works on Paper, featuring more than 20 works on paper from the Belgian artist's oeuvre from different periods (1976 - 2004).

De Keyser's drawings and watercolors are of crucial importance to his oeuvre. They provide an intimate look into the artist's thought process. Often his works on paper provide insight into his working method, as some drawings are studies for his later paintings. However, they are not traditional preliminary studies; he never plans and rarely follows the conventional steps of an artistic process. For example, the drawings can be a reaction to his own paintings, or series of paintings, where he may discover a new path without knowing where it will lead.

This balance in De Keyser's work between the playful and the unexpected is best experienced when viewing a series of works in which the process becomes visible. That process of remembering and looking back is essential to De Keyser's work.

Raoul De Keyser is a Belgian painter born in Deinze. From 1964 onwards he built a highly personal body of work that is exceptionally difficult to categorize; he successfully reconciled several apparent contradictions such as figuration versus abstraction and the physicality of paint versus the ephemerality of the image. His work also explored the fundamentals of painting whilst also referring to his personal life and surroundings. De Keyser took the principles of the Nieuwe Visie (New Vision) and Fundamental Painting in the 1970s and used them to develop his own idiom, which was to bring him international recognition.

Zeno X Gallery represents Raoul De Keyser since 1988. His first institutional solo exhibition in Asia will take place in M Woods (Bejing) next fall 2022. Zijn eerste institutionele solotentoonstelling in Azië zal volgend najaar (2022) plaatsvinden in M Woods, Peking. Important solo exhibitions were held at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2019), S.M.A.K. in Ghent (2018), Inverleith House in Edinburgh (2015), Kunstmuseum Bonn (2009), Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent (2009), The Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin (2009), FRAC Auvergne in Clermont-Ferrand (2008), Kunstverein Sankt Gallen (2005), Museu Serralves in Porto (2005), De Pont in Tilburg (2004), Whitechapel Gallery in London (2004), Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle (2002), The Renaissance Society in Chicago (2001), Kunstmuseum Luzern (1999), M HKA in Antwerp (1997), Portikus in Frankfurt (1991), Kunsthalle Bern (1991), amongst many others.