In Brussels, the Maruani Mercier gallery presents "The Space In Between", an exhibition where painting engages in dialogue with artificial intelligence, in a fruitful interplay between myth and reality.
For Von Wolfe – whose real name is Wolfe von Lenkiewicz – painting is never a mere surface, but a field of tensions where the intimate opens onto the enigmatic. With "The Space In Between," presented at the Maruani Mercier gallery, the British artist explores the in-between, this floating space where man and machine observe and contradict each other, where reality is imbued with unreality. Far from using artificial intelligence as a simple image-making machine, Von Wolfe makes it an unpredictable interlocutor, pouring forth hybrid visions, absurd or unsettling propositions. From this flow, he retains moments of particular psychic intensity, which he then reworks in oil with classical precision. Thus is born a new, mythical realism, nourished both by the painter's instinctive approach and the machine's subconscious.
Her figures, often female, stand in austere interiors or strangely familiar landscapes, accompanied by intriguing objects: a miniature house in flames, a rickety train, a fish in an oversized bowl. They seem to want to say something without ever revealing their meaning, suspended in a radical ambivalence. Von Wolfe himself acknowledges this: they are not symbols, but presences that defy fixed interpretation. Each canvas then becomes a fragile theater, where the law of gravity bends to the psyche. In Golden Blaze, The figure's shadow becomes autonomous, while the miniature fire freezes in an improbable stillness. Secret Journey A woman turns her gaze towards us, both imperious and vulnerable, as a small train belches smoke onto an unfinished track. Further on, we discover languid bodies adorned with pearl necklaces, overlooking a steam train, or a woman sailing alone in a boat encircled by flames, and another riding a golden fish that has escaped from a giant bowl. Each image reveals the flaw in reality, the opening onto the uncanny.
Von Wolfe conceives of his practice as a conversation between mediums, painting and AI. “I don’t consider these two mediums to be hierarchical: for me, they are more like a voice and an echo, or a body and a shadow,” he states, adding: "I would not place the shadow in an inferior position simply because it lacks the physicality of the body, nor the echo as a less beautiful and less powerful instrument than the voice." His work is born from this intertwining, in a world where certainties are eroding.
Born in 1966, and having exhibited at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, the Ateneum in Helsinki, and the Saatchi Gallery in London, the artist is now marking a major milestone in his career in Brussels. With "The Space In Between," Von Wolfe presents a painting deeply rooted in our time: an era of hybridizations, shifting realities, and uncertain narratives that, far from collapsing, find in this in-between space a renewed mythical power.
"The Space In Between"
Maruani Mercier Gallery, Avenue Louise 430, Brussels (Belgium)
From 4 September to 18 October 2025
