Behind the images of Léopold Rabus seem to hover those happy childhood memories of the days when grandpa took you by the hand and walked with you through a park to settle down on a bench by the lake to feed the ducks. The gentle colors still recall the joyful gleam in children’s eyes – but since then, something has changed. Smiles have turned into manic grins staring down into cribs of children with egg-white eyes and absurdly straight, wound-like partings. The innocence of those childhood days is lost, the ducks have turned into sharp-beaked crows bearing the ugly marks of many fights upon their faces’ raw flesh.

The pictorial worlds of Léopold Rabus defy any clear definition. He plays with clichés, with symbols and well-known motives, alters them or assigns them new meanings. His thematic series engage in aspects of good and bad, of religion and sexuality, life and death, themes that come to be satirized by the shrill coloring, the particular materials and the extraordinary luminance of the paintings. The young artist’s unmistakable style, his manner of combining the aesthetic with the abysmal, the carnal with the ulterior, his unfolding of twilight worlds filled with fantasy and ambiguity, the energy and forcefulness of his paintings bestow his works with a vibrancy whose impact one can hardly elude.