Charlie De Voet sculpts paintings by pushing matter to its limits. By layering, pressing, cutting, scraping and folding, he (re)places and (re)shapes the surface of the canvas, often allowing for the works to protrude into our space. It is the artist’s urge to experiment with the organic characteristics of paint that turns his works into sculptural installations. Layers upon layers of paint naturally melt into colourful ripples, guided by the handling of the artist. Nearly-dried paint is neatly cut from its carrier and collage-wise reused elsewhere, while the skinned painting is filled in again with new paint. Sometimes the painterly layer is placed as if it slipped away from the canvas, sometimes it is sculpted into a three-dimensional, humorous trompe l’œil.
De Voet’s large, not-so-monochrome paintings, like Don’t Mind the Painting (2021), are the result of coincidence and the behaviour of paint. The artist first applies the lightest colour in the middle, and then fans it out with his brush. He repeats this process alla prima for many layers, slowly switching to the other, darker colours. The continuously wet mixture of paint eventually takes on a buttery texture that ripples like sand at the shore. This meditative gradient that channels Rothko stands in contrast with the overall playfulness of De Voet’s work.
The element of play is pivotal in De Voet’s oeuvre. The artist has fun with paint as if it was clay. Employing the physical qualities of oil paint, he explores how far he can go with taking paint outside of the canvas without destroying the material. One day, on a whim, he cut out a work’s surface layer of which the bottom layers of paint had not completely dried yet, and he has never looked back. This sculptural handling of the work allows for the artist to use oil paint – a classic artistic tool – in a spatial manner. In the case of Present Future Painting (2022) it means he can transfer a painting’s surface onto another canvas while playing with the function of the top layer, or for Ball Painting II (2022) it even means that paint that previously was the surface of Empty Painting (2022) can now stand alone (albeit with a little help from neatly hidden wires).
This dissection of paint is not an aggressive or audacious act. It is a carefully executed and time consuming gesture that asks for surgical precision at the right time during the drying process. De Voet is not having fun like a reckless child, he carefully considers when to cut where, which shape it will have, what it will be used for. In the case of Extended Still Life (2022) he used strips of paint of the same painting to add three-dimensional leaves to the plant, creating an interesting trompe l’œil with a flair of paintception. Other times he keeps pieces of cut paint to add to later paintings, as he did for A Well-Adapted Landscape (2022). The latter also shows that being meticulous is not just reserved for when the artist removes paint from its carrier. He is also cautious when it comes to the composition.
De Voet’s work is fun yet fragile, something that is probably most felt in his self-portrait A Clear-Headed Painting As an Obscured Self-Portrait of the Exhibited Artist (2022). We see the painter on a chair – his studio chair covered in canvas. His undressed body is composed of a sculptural painting. He is flat, thin, and limp. Draped over the chair, his head disappears behind the backrest. The artist’s face is not visible until you walk around the installation. He is blindfolded. ‘I hide behind my work,’ the artist explains. ‘So I wanted to do a self-portrait that was as honest as possible. I feel naked when presenting my work.’ So here he is, locked up but not locked in, in a showcase without glass, one foot almost out.
This rather sombre work sits in stark contrast with one of De Voet’s brightest works so far, the large A Painting (About Visual Confinement) As an Arbitrary Symphony From the Luna Park (2022). Inspired by an arcade in Japan with an abundance of overwhelming noise, coloured lights, and rows and rows of various slot machines, this work shines and shouts. It displays another of De Voet’s experimental approaches to painting. Again by coincidence, he noticed that due to a mistake one of his paintings had to be pulled apart into two halves, leaving a ruffled edge of paint where the canvas split. A Painting (About Visual Confinement) As an Arbitrary Symphony From the Luna Park has six such panels that are each split into four. He then let a self-made raffle decide on the order and rhythm of the panels, creating a colourful symphony that is reminiscent of a cage. The artist feels overpowered and trapped, but at least he gets to play.
(For the exhibition Charlie De Voet. AND LO, SLO MO AUTO BANG at Barbé Gallery. On view until 23 October 2022.)