M HKA Ensembles

Painting, 180 x 120 cm.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK6961_E).

Raoul De Keyser starts to paint in 1963 under the influence of his teacher Roger Raveel. At first, his subjects are concrete everyday objects and items from his immediate surroundings, set down markedly simplified on canvas. His work takes a more abstract bend in the 1970's. A concrete element remains present, but the representation is less recognizable and makes way for color planes with linear elements. In the decades of the Eighties and Nineties, figuration more-and-more disappears in the sobriety of paint-layers.

The work Penetrant dates from the 1990's.  By this time the painter had already for some years been delving into the notion of painting itself, and the possibilities of materials in this context.  Here, creativity emerges from out of practical confrontations with the material means of the medium itself.  For the painter, each work comprises research into the support, the paint type and the texture.  The painter seems to be testing colors, materials, forms and brushstrokes in mutual relationship, or not, in terms of their spatial potentialities.  It appears that it is not so much pure tones that interest him, but rather the lengthy process of 'disguise', with revelation achieved utterly slowly and bit-by-bit. 

The work's title, Penetrant, refers to a liquid that is added to a material in order to achieve a cover-layer, so that it may better impregnate the surface.  In this piece the artist so investigates the character of the covering layer.