If you happen to be Antwerp this week, and maybe you are, Laurent Proux, one of our favorite French painters, is opening Out of the Blue with GNYP Gallery.
In his expressive, large-format works, Proux (b. 1980; France) stages humans in the field of tension between industry and nature in the context of 21st century’s late capitalism. Depictions of workers in offices, factories and warehouses are juxtaposed with light-flooded scenes of people and nature. While the realistic depictions of the working and factory environment have a sober – perhaps sobering – quality, Proux uses powerful and expressive stylistic means in his depictions of nature. The interplay of the works confronts the viewer with the riddle of the human nature in the present day, which is to be deciphered in its multi-layered levels. What is the (un)natural? Is it people in an industrial context, protected by their clothes and a monotonous daily routine, or is it the naked body at the mercy of nature, caught between deformation and the instinctive freedom of animal instincts? Proux gives no clear answer – there are hints of hope and decline in both worlds. The works appear as multi-layered mirrors of human identity and way of life, inviting viewers to find themselves in Proux’s ambivalent worlds.
