In a conjoined effort LMAKprojects and Stephan Stoyanov Gallery are proud to present Belgian artist Lieven De Boeck’s autoportrait contre
nature. The exhibit is held across the two gallery locations and will offer an in-depth insight into De Boeck’s current work.
In both locations he will ex... Read more
In a conjoined effort LMAKprojects and Stephan Stoyanov Gallery are proud to present Belgian artist Lieven De Boeck’s autoportrait contre
nature. The exhibit is held across the two gallery locations and will offer an in-depth insight into De Boeck’s current work.
In both locations he will expand upon his idea of space and how individuals and the public influence and identify this space. Pulling the concept into a more personal realm, De Boeck has drawn various ‘typological’ self-portraits erasing his characteristics and leaving the sheer impression of volume that an individual occupies.
This idea is worked out in autoportrait contre nature in which emptiness engages an empty slide: a portrait of an empty portrait.Through the elimination of recognizable features, De Boeck questions our being and our identity, be it race, nationality, or sexuality.
The exhibit has two neon works: let us be and let us be US. The first, a neon sentence in the colors of the Belgian flag, presents De
Boeck’s nationality but also brings forth the duality of Belgium – a political center of Europe yet divided by three languages. The second, made during his residency in the US, is a similar neon sentence however without color, playing on the US and embracing the American credo of the individual.
In the same vein, De Boeck has transformed and stripped the written word and language into symbols he has found throughout the urban landscape. Thereby, he questions our notion of language. As in l.e.t.t.e.r.s., consisting of four books to represent a year and its seasons, De Boeck has drawn 366 pieces like a diary yet erased whole structures forcing the viewer to reinterpret the structure of a letter. This theme is reiterated in Enfin je vois clair en moi-même, j’ai peur d’être vu which are found text fragments and existing drawings like the poetic maps of Carl Andre, ‘translated’ into an
alphabet of urban graffiti or signs. The creation of the current works involves producing a systematic classification according to their shared characteristics. It means erasing or neutralizing the particular distinction in order to keep the most general ones.
The thread that binds the two shows is De Boeck’s view on space using self-portraits and language which allows the viewer to succumb to the same questioning: who am I and who are we?
