Alain Biltereyst: Slow, simple, sweet
Grey
January 14–February 20, 2016
Opening: January 14, 7–9pm
Brand New Gallery
via Farini 32
20159 Milan
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11am–1pm and 2:30–7pm
T +39 02 89 05 30 8
press@brandnew-gallery.com
Alain Biltereyst: Slow, simple, sweet
Gallery 1
Slow, simple, sweet is the first solo exhibition by Belgian artist Alain Biltereyst in Italy.
Biltereyst continues to explore shapes and colours through his plywood paintings series.
Although his small paintings tend to be abstract, the artist always starts from an existing (urban) reality. The study of signs is a theme that runs through Biltereyst’s work. These ties to the present are what differentiate Biltereyst from the abstract art of early last century, which wanted to evoke a world of its own, separate from the existing reality. In his work we always find a reference, to the contemporary everyday life, the here and the now.
The raw wood on which he works, the deliberate errors in the geometric shapes and the inaccuracies created while painting refer to graffiti art dynamics.
With a background in graphic design, Biltereyst is fascinated by the vividness and struggle of commercial and other signs in the public arena. A poster, a design on a truck, logos, ads out in the street, etc…all these signs are part of an everyday idiom, blurring the lines between culture and subculture.
“My influences come from everyday life. I’m easily blown away by the brutal elegant design on a passing truck.
I just love it and can only hope that my work transmits that same feeling. That one feels “the street” in my paintings.
Through the title Slow, simple, sweet I want to stress the simplicity that I strive for. To stand still for the simple, sweet beauty of the everyday.”
Alain Biltereyst (b. 1965, Anderlecht, Belgium) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. He has recently presented solo exhibitions at Nougueras Blanchard (Madrid), Jack Hanley Gallery (New York) and Galeria Múrias Centeno (Porto). Recent exhibitions also include More or Less at Transmitter in Brooklyn and Pliage/Fold at Gagosian Gallery in Paris.
Grey
Gallery 2
Curated by Domenico de Chirico
Martin Erik Andersen / Chris Bradley / Jesse Darling / Keith Farquhar / Anders Holen / Daniel Keller / Yves Scherer
Grey is a very common colour in nature. The human eye can recognize the same object as grey or as any other colour depending on how much light there is. The eye can distinguish 16 levels of grey. Grey is a complementary colour.
The grey colour in painting has been experimented and theorized for centuries. The Classic conception considers grey as an “off-white.” It can be obtained adding black to white. However, there are other methods to obtain grey: for example combining the three primary colours (blue, yellow, red). In this case grey is called “neutral grey.” Differently from black, this special colour allows to simulate more naturally the shadows. Another way to create grey consists in mixing the primary colours for printing: cyan, magenta, yellow.
This colour defines a relationship between the sensible and the super sensible. As Hegel wrote in his essay Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences(1): “the symbol expresses both more and less than its intended meaning.”
“Grey matter” contains most of the brain’s neuronal cell bodies and for this reason grey colour is referred to the intellectual sphere.
Moreover, it represents an attitude characterized by objectivity and balance because grey is a colour which includes white and black: good and evil.
David Batchelor wrote in Chromofobia (2): “For this colour—intense, heightened, pure, unqualified—offered a glimpse of the ‘Other World,’ a world beyond Nature and the Law, a world undimmed by language, concepts, meanings and uses.”
He noted that “Dorothy’s Kansas, as we know, is grey.”
–Domenico de Chirico
(1) G.W.F. Hegel, excerpt from Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 1830.
(2) David Batchelor, excerpt from Chromophobia, London: Reaktion, 2000.
