The nomad image has been a scapegoat for civilization, which contrasts its own excellence with the nomad’s raw and wild life. The nomad image has become an icon of anti-civilization and the nomad has been given the role of civilization’s curse. (Niillas Oskal, Philosopher, Norway)

envoy enterprises is proud to announce Philippe Vandenberg’s second solo exhibition in New York City. A selection of paintings and drawings from the last twenty years lead us through a complex, poetic and emotionally intelligent oeuvre of one of Belgium’s most prominent contemporary artists.

L’image Maudite (the Cursed Image) is an exhibition about nomadism. Philippe Vandenberg paints to resist. This act of resistance is one that carries the potential of safeguarding the artist from stagnation and immobility, artistically and conceptually. Resistance is not only the leitmotif of the painter; it is his attitude. Vandenberg continuously pushes his work to its most critical point, its ultimate deadline: the moment when the painting transcends and escapes the painter in order to fulfill its own potential. Metaphorically, the artist compares the act of painting with the kamikaze, and he obsessively scrawls L’important c’est le Kamikaze (The Important is the Kamikaze) on a series of large-scale canvasses. In one of his early writings the artist muses that There is no emergency exit. One can’t escape from his destiny. It is Philippe Vandenberg’s destiny to resist, revolt, curse, sacrifice and live the life of a painter in the margins.

“I am as free as I decide myself; as a painter I don’t have to justify myself nor do I have to consider other people.” Philippe Vandenberg, Painting as a challenge, 1984.

Paintings and drawings by Philippe Vandenberg were recently on view in The Visions Come exhibition at NADA in Miami and the traveling group shows Bad Moon Rising 1 at Silverman Gallery in San Francisco and Bad Moon Rising 2 at ISCP in New York. Le Point Zero, Vandenberg’s first solo exhibition in New York was hosted by the Angel Orensanz Foundation | Center for the Arts in NYC. From April to August 2008, Philippe Vandenberg was the artist in residence at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium. Vandenberg’s works were exhibited together with paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, James Ensor, Theodore Gericault and Karel Van de Woestijne, among others.

Jan Van Woensel is an independent curator based in New York and Los Angeles.