Laurens Legiers, 'Soft Thoughts'
Laurens Legiers, 'Soft Thoughts'
Published by PLUS-ONE Gallery
13 pages, 42 x 29,7 cm, paperback, English
----
Text:
On the occasion of Laurens Legiers’ solo exhibition, PLUS-ONE Gallery launched a publication of the artist.
When Romanticism evolved around the idea of glorifying emotions, imagination, subjectivity, and the beauty of nature in late 18th century Europe, many works of art were a direct response to the industrial revolution that was rapidly changing every aspect of life. Now, some 200 years later, Belgian painter Laurens Legiers (1994) draws on the images from that period and the atmosphere they encapsulate, reinventing some of the signature tropes and creating his own library of tributes to the everyday snapshots of beauty and harmony.
Working with imagery that connects with a certain romantic idea on a contextual level, while carrying a clean and notable sense of volume to it, Legiers uses his subjects to construct captivating and perplexing visuals. With a focus on the motif as a whole, rather than on details and separate features, the visuals appear soft, almost graphic, and are the perfect base for the light and shadow play he performs on the surface of his paintings. In an effort to paint from the heart and memory, he implements only a few realistic attributes that define the image and then proceeds to simplify or idealize the final composition and each element in the picture. The quietness and pleasantness of the symmetric compositions that constitute the pristine scenes are further pushing his oeuvre towards the surreal idyll.
Yet, there is a subtle tension underlying the work which both holds the image together, as well as seize