A drama lives inside every portray by Raoul De Keyser. Even the sparsest works are total galaxies buzzing with exercise. But, as curator Helen Molesworth writes of Contact Sport, the late artist’s present present at David Zwirner Gallery, De Keyser “deliciously halts the human impulse to make meaning.”
He could not all the time halt the impulse, however De Keyser’s work are fascinatingly inscrutable abstractions, with not one of the compositional logic that grounds, say, an AbEx portray. As a substitute, he alludes to an inside logic that enlivens their quivering traces, floating orbs and squares, irregular shapes, and even their watery washes of coloration. In “Blue Note” (2006), an azure floor covers many of the modestly sized canvas, its seen brushstrokes each indicating the artist’s hand and evoking waves underscored by just a few small dots and shapes and one giant white type close to the underside that may very well be a landmass. The composition is so off-kilter, with the white type nearly touching the underside fringe of the canvas and the middle pure blue, that the dissonance between the portray’s materiality and its picture can’t actually be the purpose. It’s the awkwardness that stands out, discouraging potential readings simply because it beckons them.
Raoul De Keyser, “Untitled (Speed)” (1995), oil on canvas
In “Untitled (Speed)” (1995), a row of inexperienced diamonds on a white floor enters the image aircraft from one aspect, like a geometrical abstraction on a race towards a end line. Many of the composition is smeared, destroying the sample and, for many artists, the portray’s worth — and in consequence, fostering a simultaneous sense of thriller and aesthetic wrongness. The same sensibility is obvious, with out the smearing, in different work like “Proloog” and “Clos” (each 2003), through which inexperienced shapes that appear like paper scraps randomly float on a impartial floor. These works create a drama of wanting by doing nothing however being taciturn about their very own being.
“I … always searched for forms of waywardness,” De Keyser mentioned in an interview with historian Hans Theys. As a result of the waywardness of his work is a product of its unstated logic, its actors — all these marks and variations that animate every work — are performing exactly the suitable roles. The obvious awkwardness is an phantasm, simply as what appears nonsensical to 1 dwelling being is likely to be significant to a different, or to the universe at giant. However we needn’t determine it out. On this method, De Keyser will be the most liberating painter I can consider.
Raoul De Keyser, “Blue Note” (2006), oil on canvas
Raoul De Keyser, “Untitled” (2006), oil on canvas
Raoul De Keyser, “Replay” (2002), oil on canvas
Raoul De Keyser: Contact Sport continues at David Zwirner Gallery (519 & 525 West nineteenth Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan) by means of March 1. The exhibition was curated by Helen Molesworth.
