For nearly fifty years, Raoul De Keyser has created subtly evocative paintings and works on paper which appear at once straightforward and cryptic, abstract and figurative. Composed of basic but indefinable shapes and marks, his works often invoke spatial and figural illusions, though they remain elusive of any descriptive narrative.

In this exhibition of new paintings, De Keyser presents small-scale compositions that appear to be variations of an abstract idea. Certain forms reoccur across a number of works, yet a serial logic remains difficult to pinpoint and the constancy of his works derives rather from the physical characteristics of the medium of painting itself.

Raoul De Keyser was born in 1930 in Deinze, Belgium, where he still lives and works, and attended the Academy of Fine Arts from 1963 to 1964. Since 1999, his work has been represented by David Zwirner, and Raoul De Keyser: FREEDOM marks the artist’s fifth solo show at the gallery.