In Fantasy in F, Catharina Dhaen and Tosja van Lieshout probe the cyclical nature of time, image, and meaning. The title alludes to Schubert’s composition, in which a central theme continually returns, each time subtly altered by what precedes it—a musical metaphor for the layering and transformation both artists explore in their work.
Dhaen’s practice departs from the principle of the ouroboros, the ancient symbol of eternal return. By repeatedly painting over her own canvases, she constructs layered compositions in which past and present converge. Her paintings function as expansive visual fields where layer upon layer accumulates toward a provisional moment of harmony—the point at which the circle closes, without ever fully ending. In an era defined by acceleration and consumption, Dhaen’s method proposes a radical alternative: slowness, reuse, and attentiveness as both artistic and ethical strategies.
Van Lieshout’s work is guided by natural processes and by the cycle of emergence, decay, and renewal. A recent residency in Japan has deepened her visual language: figuration, abstraction, and color arrive at a subtle equilibrium, while Eastern perceptions of space, silence, and rhythm reverberate through her compositions. The result is an open pictorial field in which nature and human experience coalesce.
Fantasy in F unfolds as a poetic meditation on temporality and continuity. In a world where the notion of linear progress is increasingly under pressure, Dhaen and Van Lieshout propose a visual countercurrent—cyclical, layered, and fundamentally attuned to natural and cultural rhythms.