rodolphe janssen is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition at the gallery of Belgian artist Fred Bervoets (b. 1942 in Antwerp, Belgium. Lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium), which will take place from September 7th to October 14th, 2023. Fred Bervoets: Paintings & Works on Paper from the Stéphane Janssen Collection celebrates the recent donation of a significant body of work from the Stéphane Janssen collection to the KMSKA, Antwerp,
Belgium.
Stéphane Janssen was Fred Bervoets’s first dealer from 1967-68. In the following decade and for the next thirty years, he became one of his main collectors and a fervent advocate of his work. In addition to exhibitions organized in Europe, Stéphane Janssen introduced his work in the United States in the late 1980s. Several major shows followed, including A Museum in the Making in 1994 at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale, AZ USA, which featured a dialogue between his works and those of the American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The present exhibition is designed around a monumental painting from the 1980s, Zelfportret als kabouter (Selfportrait As A Munchkin), which refers to the figure of the dwarf. The expressionist scene frames a panoramic view of a city bordered by water, where various sketches of buildings, sometimes sprinkled with a face, intertwine with myriad anthropomorphic figures of disproportionate dimensions. They spring like conquerors besieging a city in turmoil, joined by diverse parallel scenes, ultimately resulting in a painting of great narrative complexity with undeniable theatrical dimensions.
This large work is accompanied by a selection of gouaches on paper and paintings dating from the end of the sixties depicting various scenes with puzzling perspectives, such as spaghetti or sausage eaters swallowing their meals; another one portrays a soldier brandishing his flamethrower; a little further in the room, a cosmonaut floats above a giant matchbox, and elsewhere a more abstract painting.