Posture Editions and Laura Van worked on SEX WITH PAINT, a publication with recent still lifes by Van. The works, for which the artist uses only oils, are without photographic point of departure: they are the result of an inflection of what the artist observes on the table in his living and working space. They are therefore anecdotal-autobiographical in nature—a nature that is emphatically determined by the motorial and psychological intentions of the moment.

Each still life is an accumulation of language, anecdotal elements, coffee, pages, stains, dots and modulations of tonal depths and shades of grey.

Laura van’s art is an eruption of thoughts about painting, channelled in oils that evoke the illusion of piles of books and grubby tables. The grey, drab paintings are outside time. We notice traces of French painters such as Corot, Vuillard, Soutine, Cézanne or the German Corinth, though that may be a mistake, a paintwise trompe l’oeil.

On the opposite page, facing the paintings, a voice-over text has been printed: Laura as it were comments on the paintings, while he also seems to shuffle the piled-up books.

Laura (b. 1957) was almost 30 years the artistic director of croxhapox, based in Ghent, Belgium.

Launched at Roger Raveelmuseum at the opening of the exhibition (11.11.2018 – 24.02.2019)