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With A Spirit in Painting, Antwerp-based artist Tom Poelmans reveals the reverse sides of a wide selection of works spanning the past fifteen years, exhibited in the side gallery at KIOSK. Poelmans shows the reverse sides of a wide selection of paintings made over the past fifteen years. These unseen backs often bear titles, dates, sketches, material traces, and other marks: silent witnesses to the process and the life of the studio. On December 6, two weeks prior to the closing of the show, all works will be turned around, revealing their front sides for the first time. That same day, the book A Spirit in Painting will be launched, published by MER. Alongside front and back views of a broad selection of works, the book includes drawings and poems by Tom Poelmans, as well as texts by people close to him. The title of both the exhibition and the publication is a nod to the legendary 1981 show A New Spirit in Painting, held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. That historic exhibition marked a renewed appreciation of painting as a medium, and offers a meaningful backdrop to Poelmans’ reflection on his own practice.

Biografie

Whenever Tom Poelmans starts to paint, he is flooded with a rather innocent and spontaneous thought that he can freely paint whatever he wants, through his floating brushstrokes on the canvas. Each of his creation inevitably faces that illusion of free will that he himself claims. The final painting is undoubtedly the result of this struggle. It is a journey into the author’s mind, based on infinite possibilities, a process that begins with a drawing and then ends with a decidedly unpredictable pictorial image. His work shows an exceptional and intricate heterogeneity, with a dreamlike vocation rich in symbols, allegories and metaphors, characterized both by precise compositions and by confident and material brushstrokes, covering every inch of the surfaces he uses. His work has recently been exhibited at Anna Zorina Gallery, New York, NY USA; rodolphe janssen, Brussels, Belgium; Andrea Festa Fine Art, Rome, Italy; Ballroom Project, Antwerp, Belgium; Jack Barrett Gallery, East Hampton, New York, NY USA; the White Whale Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium; The Cabin, Los Angeles, CA USA; SecondRoom, Antwerp, Belgium; Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium; Garage, Mechelen, Belgium; DMW-Artspace, Antwerp, Belgium; Base-Alpha Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium; SVA, New York, NY USA; and Be-Part, Waregem, Belgium.

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