Philippe Vandenberg @ Hauser & Wirth – London

Opening this next Tuesday in central London, Belgian artist Philippe Vandenberg will be coming to Hauser & Wirth for the first time, and at the same time this will be the artist’s first solo show in the UK with a selection of oil paintings on canvas and wood produced during the late nineties.

‘I am an artist of emotion and reflections. I don’t mean sentimentalism, the emotional, but the shock of the emotion that triggers, as it were, the reflection. Only the reflection creates space.’ – Philippe Vandenberg (1952 – 2009).

At the beginning of the 1980s, painters in Europe began to revolt against the hegemony of American conceptual art. From the Transavanguardia in Italy to the Neue Wilde in Germany, a Neo-Expressionist style rose to the surface, vehement and uncompromising. Among these young artists was the Belgian painter, Philippe Vandenberg. Vandenberg continued to work with this Neo-Expressionist style until the mid-1990s when his work, whether figurative or abstract, became more visceral and tormented, evincing not only the artist’s battle with his medium, but also with his own demons.

Vandenberg drew motifs, figures and icons from an immense literature of art history, myths and sagas. He employed these loaded themes in his paintings: beheadings in which not only the body but also the painting itself was mutilated; the vainglorious king torn apart by dogs; the lion as symbol of power, the bear as symbol of cruelty, and the hare as a sign of haste and angst; rings of fire and scenes of torture and rape. Vandenberg opened Pandora’s Box in an attempt to grasp all that was irrational and desperate in his world.

For the next 2,5 months this universe of creatures and colourful underground scenes will be exhibited @ H&W. a unique occasion to get to know this artist whose works rarely travel outside Belgium. More info and images on their webpage.