Philippe Vandenberg // Crossing The Circle

Philippe Vandenberg: Crossing The Circle comes out on the occasion of the first exhibition in the UK of the drawings of Vandenberg (1952 – 2009), who is considered one of the foremost painters in Belgium. Vandenberg’s extraordinary drawings, distinguished by fluid draughtsmanship in pencil, ink, sometimes blood and richly colored watercolor, possess an urgency and economy alongside a playful sensibility. His drawings have rarely been shown. Vandenberg was an accomplished and prolific draughtsman, filling hundreds of sketchbooks with drawings and watercolors. For the first time, the publication Crossing The Circle shows a selection of drawings spanning the years 1990 to the year of his death in 2009. The works selected display radical stylistic and thematic shifts, that combine highly personal images about life, sex, death, good, evil, as well as powerful responses to the political and social upheavals which the artist perceived around him. They explore difficult confrontational subjects of personal suffering and brutal depictions of human cruelty that express an existential disgust and despair with the world but equally can contain humor.