Bent Van Looy

Born in 1976 in Antwerp, Van Looy studied painting at the St.Lucas in Ghent. He became well-known as a musician playing in bands such as Soulwax and Das Pop. Looking at the landscapes and figures inhabiting the surfaces of his paintings we are reminded of Edgar Allan Poe’s visions, the Période Vache of Magritte or Walt Disney’s early movies. Throughout the practice Van Looy thoughtfully deploys hindsight, left in our time, to evoke a Disneyfied ersatz version of Romanticism. The beauty of his paintings resides in his ability to balance the weight of their fundamentals and the fragility of his subjects. In the end, the hodgepodge cast of seemingly naïve and impassive characters move in a world that, much like ours, is a terrible place but where the cruel reflections on Plato’s cave wall bathe in the gooey magenta hue of a Hollywood sunset.