A group show with four Belgian artists – Michiel Ceulers, Ellen de Meutter, Peter Rogiers, Ante Timmermans

Ana Cristea Gallery is pleased to present Accidental Thoughts and Metaphors, a group show bringing together the artistic practices of four Belgian artists: Michiel Ceulers, Ellen de Meutter, Peter Rogiers and Ante Timmermans. The works in the exhibition begin from traditional approaches to specific mediums. Starting from a stretched canvas, a mound of clay, or a piece of paper, the artists slice, paste and sculpt these materials into works that are both images and objects, surfaces and interiors, visual and physical provocations. At the bridge between abstract and figuration, each artist presents a distinct and singular approach and outcome, often through the combination of what seem to be opposing forces.

Michiel Ceulers, the youngest of the group (b.1986), creates abstract paintings that are primarily concerned with the medium and act of painting itself. His works are deliberately imperfect: he allows them to crowd together and lean against each other in the studio, and the marks and smears that result are integral to the completed paintings, telling the ‘story’ of their creation. Ceulers was born in Belgium and today lives and works in Amsterdam. He has had solo exhibitions in Amsterdam, Brussels, London, and Zurich. In 2011, Ceulers was chosen as the recipient of the Young Belgian Painters Award. This show will be his first in the United States.

Ellen de Meutter, also a young artist (b.1981), employs the unique pictorial vocabulary she has developed to engage with her childhood memories in a manner that is perhaps more emotional and abstracted than it is narrative. De Meutter resides and works in Antwerp. In 2010, her work was featured in a solo museum exhibition at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle, Belgium; she has also had recent solo exhibitions in Antwerp and Los Angeles. This is the first time that her work will appear in New York.

Highly aware of art history and also inspired by comics, b-movies, and fairytales, Peter Rogiers creates sculptures—heads, birds, and other amorphous figures—that appear to be in flux; one gets the sense that the sculptures themselves may shift form at any moment. Rogiers was born in 1967 in Antwerp and now lives and works in Oud-Heverlee, Belgium. His recent solo shows in Berlin, Los Angeles, and Antwerp, have been reviewed or discussed in publications such as Artforum, Sculpture, Art Review, The LA Times, and Art in America. His work is in the collections of Middelheim Open Air Museum, Antwerp, S.M.A.K., Ghent, M HKA, Antwerp, and Mu.ZEE, Oostende. This will be Rogiers’ first New York gallery exhibition.

Ante Timmerman’s works on paper combine figurative elements with repeated geometric motifs and structures; like Ellen de Meutter, he is very much concerned with his medium, its characteristics, and its possibilities. The seriousness of his concerns belies the almost childlike exuberance of his drawings. Timmermans (b.1976) is based in Ghent, Belgium and Zurich, Switzerland. His work is in the collections of several European museums, including the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung (Munich), Fundación ‘La Caixa’ (Barcelona), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (Switzerland), and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Ghent, Belgium). In 2009, he was the Zink Gallery New York Artist in Residence.

The reception opening is taking place with the support of the Flanders House in New York.