Hadrien Loumaye presents a series of assemblies of colored fields. The result of a formal reflection on color and its gestural application, his work takes a significant turn with this series. Drawing on various currents in art history, his practice seeks to reconcile the subjectivity of abstract expressionism with the serial production of minimalism.
On the canvas, gestures unfold, but the most prominent element is the omnipresence of colored depths. Through these assemblages, the artist abysses one of the fundamental challenges of painting, its frame or the limit of the pictorial field. The choice of different associations of colored planes jeopardizes the classical balance of the composition and plays with the definition of a horizon. These two juxtaposed pictorial surfaces are sometimes enhanced by a gesturality, ‘the vital energy of the creative act,’ pretending an action to let the diffusion of pure color triumph.
Beyond the evident affiliation with the expressionism of the 60s, Helen Frankenthaler, Pat Steir, or certain abstract works of the Belgian painter Raoul De Keyser, his work is paying a tribute with lightness. Here, the serial dimension offers the spectator the possibility to experience the disconcerting complexity of this seemingly simple system and the subtle color variations, accidents, or transparencies within each painting.