JOHAN VAN MULLEM

Loo & Lou Gallery — Haut Marais and L'Atelier
24.04 - 19.05.2017

Loo & Lou Gallery — George V
21.06 - 29.07.2017

Shaped by successive additions and subtractions, the faces emerge from the canvas, incarnating the many facets of humanity. This accumulation of transparent ink reinforces the effect of depth on the canvas, which seems to vibrate with an inner light, as if backlit.

Van Mullem captures light and expresses an invisible reality. His compositions open a window on an early memory that resonates intimately with our senses, sketching the cartography of our deepest being. Since the death of his father a few months ago, Van Mullem has been working in black and white. Through this mourning process, he explores new forms, and the human body occasionally makes an appearance.

From the 21th of June, there will be a new presentation of artworks in the George V gallery: this time, the spectator is facing this animated work through a set of color portraits, some of which were recently exhibited at the Ixelles Museum in Brussels. The Haut Marais gallery is showing the artist’s most recent works in black and white.

L’Atelier, a permanent exhibition space showing emblematic works by the gallery’s artists (located two doors away on the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth).  A series of large-format drawings in which the subjects are sketched with a precise, nervous, continuous line will be showing there.

The exhibition exposes different facets of an artist with an unusual career and no attachment to a “school.” Wanting his work to mature before he showed it, he waited almost five decades before finally unveiling it to the public.