Picture this: Marc Vanderleenen

In the Picture this series, the Antwerp artist Marc Vanderleenen presents a series of recent paintings combined with several maquettes. Vanderleenen sticks to figuration, but mainly in the twilight zone: where figuration stops, and the abstract takes over.

Marc Vanderleenen's work does not tolerate textual explanation: it is made to be looked at and to alternate between pleasure and discomfort. Two figures in an embrace could just as easily be strangling each other, a sculpture in a forest setting could also be a lost refugee, a fallen tree could mean the obstruction of a road or enable the crossing of a river... The titles also do not clarify but rather increase the ambiguity in interpretation.

In contrast to many of his contemporaries, Marc Vanderleenen is not seeking that one powerful image that uses color, composition, structure, texture, dynamics, and proportions. Instead, he approaches a certain theme very cautiously and in different ways, resulting in a series. The images that arise are the result of constant doubts about the possibilities and the legitimacy of contemporary painting. This makes the uncertainty and a certain existential loneliness clear in the oeuvre of Marc Vanderleenen. But above all, there is that ambiguity, the impossibility of interpreting the work unambiguously.