About

I’d like to share my artistic perspectives with you and explain more clearly the underlying premises that fuels my artistic endeavours.

Curriculum Vitae

Mathieu V. Staelens works & lives in Antwerp, born in Ostend on a salty day in 1980

 

Studies

1998/2002: Master Painting, Antwerp

2002/2003: Postdoc conservation of contemporary art, Academie Ghent in collaboration with the University of Ghent (departements of Art history, Architecture, Analytic Chemistry) &  S. M. A.K.

2003/2005: University Antwerp, Candidature Philosophy

2009-2010           Lerarenopleiding, SCVO Pestalozzi, Antwerpen

 

UPCOMING

2023     BRAFA 2023, Gallery Seghers Oostende (B)

2023     Celebrating our new found innocence, Gallery Seghers Oostende (B)

 

SOLO

2016     What happens here, stays here, Think Jazzy, Antwerp (B)

2012     Chester Shrine, kissinger, MKHA Antwerp (B)

2011      Saturated voices, Freemen Gallery, Ardenburg (NL)

2009     La Trahison de l’Ordre, diabolic formalism from 1935 and counting, RhoK, Brussels (B)

2008     Expressing the void, Grusenmeyer Art Gallery, duo with Amparo Sard, Deurle (B).

2008     Intrude: art & Life 366, Zendai MoMA: “Abstract painting based on the lives of others”, Shanghai Issue, Zendai MoMA, Shanghai (C)

2008     L.A.T., facts of life, Monty ABN-ruimte, December, Antwerp (B)

2007     Aesthetic mystifications of a new world order, Force-de-l’image #1, Labo+, Existentie, Ghent (B)

2007     Aesthetic mystifications of a new world order, Force-de-l’image #2, Labo+, Existentie, Ghent (B)

2006   “Things that appear are less ‘present’ than one would think”, Labo #2, Existentie, Ghent (B)

GROUP

2022    What remains, Nostrum gallery Waver (B)

2022    Ekstasis, Shame gallery Brussels (B)

2022    Between the folds of reality”, Black swan gallery Bruges (B)

2022    Trauma Fauna, Shame gallery Brussels (B)

2021     Pretty Ugly, Shame gallery Brussels (B)

2021     Subbacultcha @destudio during Antwerp Art Weekend, Antwerp (B)  

2019     DRAWING ALB, ALB Galerie, Paris (FR)

2016     Setting the scene, Factor 44, Antwerp (B)

2016     Multitude: Full of Mercy, Sterckshof castle, Antwerp (B)

2014     Oostends Paviljoen 2014, Venetiaanse Gaanderijen, Oostende (B)

2012     Expo Delvaux, Ghent (B)

2010     Polar Exposition, Ghent (B)

2010     Mars op Oostende, MuZEE, Ostend (B)

2009     Passionele moord, travelling exhibition: Leuven (city hall) and Doornik (Maison de la culture), organized by Museum M Leuven (B)

2009     A Starting Point: Intrude 366 —Dynamics of change and growth, from 1, Jan. to 31, Dec”, Zendai MoMA Shanghai (C)

2009     Globalocal: Bellevue Brewery, Brussels (B)

2008     Gery Christmas Show, Maes & Matthys gallery, Antwerp (B)

2007     Group 2, Maes & Matthys gallery, Antwerp (B).

2006     Prelude #2 on ‘Generic Uniqueness #1, part 1 & part 2, Arpooz gallery, Ghent (B)

2006     Cité Action, in situ, Assenede (B)

2006     M.O.B. (Met Onbekende Bestemming/ With Unknown Destination) Extra City, Antwerp (B)

2006     A la recherche de l’image perdue, 85 Gallery, Antwerp (B)

2006     Group 1, Maes & Matthys gallery, Antwerp (B)

2005     After Nature, Aeroplastics Gallery, Brussels (B)

2004     Excessoire, Factor 44, Antwerpen (B)

 

FAIR

2019     “Pulse art fair Miami”, ALB Galerie, Paris (FR)

2019     “Galeristes”, ALB Galerie, Paris (FR)

2009   “Salon du dessin contemporain”, Grusenmeyer Art Gallery, Parijs (FR)

2009   “Art Brussels”, Grusenmeyer Art Gallery, Brussel (B)

 

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art

 

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Martial Raysse (FR)

Liedts-Meesen (BE)

Leemans (BE)

Van Laer (USA)

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

*Interview by Wouter van de Koot in occasion of the exhibition: Setting the scene, Factor 44, Antwerp (B) 2016

*Cover novel by Xu Zechen: Rennend door Bejing, uitgeverij De Geus (NL) 2015

*M.Verminck (RED.), Genereusiteit, Sint-Lucas Brussel, 2012 (co-author)

*M.Verminck (RED.), De ‘plaats’ van de kunst, Sint-lucas Brussel, 2010 (co-author)

*<H>art #17, art magazine, pg 26, (B) 2008

*Review by Laura McLean-Ferris artreview.com, 2008 (GB)

*Intrude Magazine #4, Interview, pag. 11-19, Shanghai Zendai MoMA, Shanghai, (C), 2008

*V. von G, Things that appear are less ‘present’ than one would think, in: Cesteleyn Ann, De Block Bart, Scherlippens Björn (RED.), Labo’s #1-3, Ghent, 2007

*V. von G, Aesthetic mystifications of a new world order, Force-de-l’image #1, in: Cesteleyn Ann, De Block Bart, Scherlippens Björn (RED.), Labo’s #1-3, Ghent, 2007

*De huisarts, 20 Dec., Nr.857, pag. 31, (B) 2007

*M.O.B.magazine, the D.I.Y. issue #1, sep., (B) 2006

ARTIST STATEMENT

Artists should indeed comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Honestly, the most important thing an artist can do is to observe and show what he/she sees. ‘Perception’ is a very peculiar thing. Its not always what you see, its how you explain yourself what you see. Being aware of the layers of frames you are looking through, context and history.
As a result of my own personal past and upbringing, I have developed an excessively strong desire to unravel identities. Understanding how identities of people come into existence and function as stable entities in a social environment has always been one of my favourite pastimes. Apart from analysing human identities, I am interested to confront it with identity as a product. How does it operate, how is it made, represented, developed, structured and ultimately defined by the personality industries. Such images spoke to me. I always had a strong urge to analyse this imagery so crafty at penetrating my senses. Hence my work intertwines the visual with the contemplative, a hybrid of persuasive visual culture and philosophy.
Philosophy renders me the toolbox to analyse the correlations between identity and visualised image/identity-proposals personality industries offer. Fashion, design, interior, lifestyle magazines and social media among others deliver the attributes, context and social fabric to nurture these identities. Social media (facebook, instagram…) normalise glamour while pressuring the etiquette of social interactions. It raises ethical questions, refutes certain morals, opens new potentialities and creates new restrictions. Etiquette in this new form of interaction is rapidly and drastically changing.
Visually spoken, the language these images share has always triggered me. When there is a language there is much more; beliefs, values and context. It’s a very rich language; it permits to import imagery of any given period. It’s a rhetoric language, a language that firstly inflames emotions instead of reflection. Because of her visual character with its sensational gold, exotic enticements, opulent colours, clamorous chromatics, captivating metals, magnetic values, glittering media, thrilling graphics, alluring plastics and well-thought image sequences it’s designed to touch the senses (The Glamour System, Stephen Gundle, 2006). It stands in fact closer to the tradition of the medium of oil paint before modernity was introduced (Ways of seeing, John Berger, 1972), as it mostly focuses on the individual with a strong imperialistic drive. Being the language of capitalism, it eroticises perceptions to keep its paradigm intact, while disguising as thymotic benevolence. It’s the language of hyper-materialism. Those who remember the physics classes, matter is defined as weight and energy. The materialism I am referring to is a way of life, the weight is the wealth you accumulated and energy is the status and/or success of the brand that is ‘I’. Hence when this language brings the abstract in play it facilitates and undermines the autonomic force abstraction always claimed to be. It boils down to the metaphysics of this premise: on the threshold of abstraction ghosts become objects of their own imagination.
Also worth mentioning is: Preliminary materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Semiotext(e), 2012. The Young-Girl is simply put: the ‘model citizen’ as redefined by consumer society since World War I, in explicit response to the revolutionary menace. As such the Young-Girl is a ‘polar figure’, orientating, rather than dominating, outcomes. The dominating outcomes are realised by offering an underlying moral that is communicated through the images. Young people and their mothers are at stake here, they are regarded as the social principles of the consumer ethic. (Stuart Ewen, Capitains of Consiousness, 1976) Women, because they reign over the sphere of reproduction, are seen as a place to take control of and colonize. This redefining of the idea of a woman in a pure visual way can only succeed if it manages to deliver an underlying set of beliefs and principles. This underlying frame of reference is quite a crumbled field. This book, Preliminary materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, actually collected all those crumbles and merely categorised these bits and pieces.

“Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness: happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.”

John Berger

This unrelenting emphasizing on the visual brought me to the hypothesis that identity, traditionally located in the soul, has migrated to the body. Making the body to rise in importance and being prioritized, seeing it this way content becomes a consequence of form and subject to form. Qualities of forms surpass values. As if you would turn Plato’s world upside down. My goal is to emancipate and inspire people to pull themselves out of a paradigm that is manipulative towards a more encompassing freedom and eventually an authentic happiness. As an artist, I am developing images that explore this hypothesis of identity migration, without being explicitly directive or instructive – that’s up to the individual. My job is to show, rearrange, recompose and finally redirect the distributed perceptions of the personality industries, even if this means I need to mask it up for the sake of argument!

 

Mathieu V. Staelens/ Antwerp Jan. 2017