At first sight, Ritsart Gobyn's paintings appear to be a random collection of traces of a creative process. Paint splashes, smudges, wood remnants, pieces of tape or shreds of paper cover unprimed pieces of linen. All around there are pieces of wood that function as a kind of frame. It gives the work the status of a painting and suggests that it is a finished product. However, the perception tilts when it turns out that the tape or the paper shreds are painted trompe l'oeils. Ritsart Gobyn uses the trompe l'oeil as an image strategy to make the viewer aware of the creation process through the illusion of the result. In this way, the trompe l'oeil becomes a searchlight in the artistic process itself, instead of a matter of deception of sight and effect, and questions the 'status' of the painting as an image and as an object.
In this second solo exhibition Ritsart Gobyn places his paintings in a spatial installation: the illusion in the works themselves is extended to the space in which they are presented.
Opening during Antwerp Art Weekend.
Thursday, May 18
4 – 9 pm
PLUS-ONE Gallery (South)
Vlaamse Kaai 74-75
2000, Antwerp
Artists: Ritsart Gobyn