• setting …

Sergio De Beukelaer creates painting that refuses to be confined by convention. His work moves between image and object, between the cerebral and the sensory, between precise form and playful irony. With his distinctive fat canvasses, paintings that seem to swell from the wall as physical entities, he challenges the traditional status of the picture plane. The support becomes volume, the image becomes body, and colour becomes space. Not to impress, but to shift perception, to slow down the act of looking, and to make painting tangible again.

In this exhibition, - setting…, we present a selection of works in which De Beukelaer’s fascination with clarity, balance, and intensity comes together. Each piece functions as an independent object and at the same time as part of a larger, carefully composed whole. The titles, often playful or cryptic, suggest language as a visual material. The forms are mathematically precise, the colours industrially pure, yet always marked by sensitivity to nuance and a strong awareness of rhythm and scale. His images may appear almost static or clinical, yet they breathe with lightness. They speak not only to the eye, but to the space itself.

De Beukelaer’s practice engages in dialogue with the legacy of modernism and the visual language of pop art. One senses in his work the echo of Ellsworth Kelly’s colour fields, Donald Judd’s object thinking, and Lichtenstein’s graphic clarity. Yet De Beukelaer does not quote; he refines. What remains is a concentrated visual language in which form, colour, and support merge into a new and autonomous logic.

What has moved me for years in his work is that elusive combination of precision and lightness, of seriousness and humour. Each painting is both a visual constellation and an invitation to reflect. In a time when images often seem loud, superficial, and fleeting, De Beukelaer creates objects that are quieter but more intense and focused. They do not demand interpretation; they demand attention. They show how painting, even today, can still be a space for thinking, feeling, and being.

-setting is not a retrospective but a condition, a choreography of space and colour, a carefully composed environment in which Sergio De Beukelaer’s works unfold their own logic. The paintings resonate with one another, building together a space where painting is not merely observed but experienced. As gallerist and collector, I am proud to facilitate this moment, not only as a presentation of a body of work close to my heart, but as an invitation to look attentively, to think slowly, to feel with the eye.

You are invited to take part in this play of proportion, vibration, and space. For this is where Sergio De Beukelaer excels: the painting not as a window onto the world, but as a world in itself.

Artists: Sergio De Beukelaer