M HKA Ensembles

Drawing, 85 x 100 cm.

Collection: Estate Philippe Vandenberg, courtesy Hauser & Wirth.

Philippe Vandenberg was no stranger to loneliness, hard work and the restless spirit of an artist. Besides his love and recognition for the works of Diego Velázquez and Francisco Goya, the artist dedicated himself to literature in the eighties. Slowly but surely his literature and the creative act of drawing became closely intertwined, resulting in Vandenberg’s own expressive style. Il me faut tout oublier speaks to his radical reflection about and views on the world. The creation of an image always goes together with the deconstruction of the actual image, the immediate eradication of the act of creation and in a way his own subconscious existence. “I have to forget everything” demonstrates Vandenberg’s ‘tabula rasa’, a desperate escape into silence. His works show a dark pessimism and disappointment in the shallow nature of the Western world, which is engulfed in rigid political and economic rules. At first sight, Vandenberg’s paintings look aggressive and desperate but upon closer inspection they are painfully and deeply moving.