Bart Slangen
Painter, ° 1969
http://bartslangen.be/Lives and works in Ghent (BE)
The reality we see in Bart Slangen’s work is a product of an objective as well as fictitious mirror image of reality, constructed on canvas into a visual, figuratively veiled reality. Bart will observe in a sharp way what has been caught in a hurry, even frame it beforehand, but again blurry repaint it, even underpaint it. After all, he consciously pushes the subtly painted/the finely carved imaged back to a “state of what-could-have-been”. The artist seeks the shadow, the twilight, the shelter of the dark. Leads us into alienation from what is called reality, into the expectation of a desolation of things that are timeless and placeless.
(excerpt from introductory text on the occasion of the exhibition “Border” by Fernand Haerden – March 2011)
