TIM VAN LAERE GALLERY
But what makes Ben Sledsens so successful? Discovered by the eminent Antwerp gallery owner Tim Van Laere Even before he has his degree, the Belgian painter (born in 1991 in Antwerp) cannot yet fulfill all the commissions he receives – to the point of having a waiting list – while each of his new exhibitions displays sold-out Who would have thought that his large figurative canvases, with their naive lines and vibrant colors seemingly at odds with all fashions and trends, could meet with such success? Could it be precisely because they seem timeless? Perhaps we should see in them an antidote to our disenchanted world.
Drawing on the mythology of naive painters (from Pieter Brueghel the Elder to Henri Rousseau) and great colorists (Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, James Ensor, Claude Monet…) and creating his own mythology, Ben Sledsens’ painting is indeed a re-enchantment. In the Yellow Forest (2022) Moon Above the Lake (2018) Girl Lying in the Grass (2019) Girl in the Blue Room (2020) ... "In his large-scale canvases, he unveils fragments of his imaginary world, a utopia in which he himself would like to live.", A universe of vibrant, fairytale colors. In this "new world," imbued with an "idyllic radiance" and devoid of shadows, where elements of the "real world"—the surrounding nature or his daily environment—appear enlarged, idealized, as if transfigured by an unreal light and pure colors, there nevertheless hovers an "uncanny strangeness." From his landscapes inhabited by animals or women reclining on flowerbeds, as well as from his carefully composed portraits of interiors, emanates a troubled feeling, a muted tension seemingly ready to shake this overly polished and perfect world. And the painter, beyond the sweet flavors of his candy-pink or canary-yellow monochromes, sows here and there a few anomalies designed to pull us out of this waking dream in Utopia. Such is the case with the entirely blue dishes in the dresser, which itself seems contaminated by the blue spread across the door and the wall of the Woman in the Blue Roomwhose dark eyes and shiny boots cannot go unnoticed…
TIM VAN LAERE GALLERY
Jos Smolderenstraat 50,
Antwerp (Belgium)
