Stef Driesen
Rock Face
September 8, 2007–October 6, 2007The Breeder, Athens
THE BREEDER is pleased to announce the upcoming solo exhibition of Belgian painter Stef Driesen, titled Rock Face.
Stef Driesen merges in his paintings the human figure with the natural landscape, incorporating sensual brushstrokes and a fleshy palette. His Influences draw from the Old Masters’ painting tradition, particularly from Northern European and Flemish artists, such as Rubens and Van Eyck. Stef Driesen combines these art historical references with a personal narrative, investigating his own sexual identity, along with a more general undercurrent of hidden desire.
At THE BREEDER, Stef Driesen presents a series of new paintings that illustrate theatrical compositions and elicit a sense of mythic romanticism from environments that are at once beautiful and strange. Watery mountain scapes and dramatic skies frame ambiguously figurative foreground elements. Soft pinks and flashes of azure punctuate dark canvases highlighting rivers through the picture plane and revealing landscapes beyond. A figure is always present in or under the painted image, often as a submerged erotic image, and the paintings are imbued with undercurrents of hidden desire.
Recent exhibitions include:
2007 Pushing the canvas, de garage, Mechelen, Belgium
2006 Alison Jacques Gallery, London
Scar Lines, Harris Lieberman, New York
MADRe Museum, Naples, Italy
2005 MARC FOXX, Los Angeles
The Third Peak, Art:Concept, Paris, France
