Artist: Robbert Pauwels
Exhibition title: From Billy to the Hills
Venue: Billytown, The Hague, The Netherlands
Date: April 8 – May 27, 2022
Photography: Charlott Markus / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Billytown, The Hague
From Billy to the Hills
In this exhibition, Robbert Pauwels’ sweeping, turbulent, and somewhat melancholic brushstrokes are drawn out from the intimacy of the page into the arena of the gallery space, creating a circular installation which leads the viewer through a series of large-scale wall paintings punctuated by sculptural elements.
On this scale, Pauwels’ work shifts the isolated (day)dream into a fluid reality, showing the frustrated but familiar state of both looking forwards and backwards simultaneously: longing, remembering, worrying, endlessly associating, but never fully existing in the so- called ‘here and now’.
Pinned down by the monumental format of the wall painting, a shifting landscape of droplets, letters, fences, and shuddering figures pass by as we travel from the city, through the dunes, towards the small-town of youth.
-Maja Klaassens
Robbert Pauwels, Overview ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Untitled ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Untitled ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Untitled ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Detail ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Untitled ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Detail ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Untitled ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Untitled ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Untitled ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Untitled ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Untitled ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Untitled ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022
Robbert Pauwels, Detail ‘From Billy to the Hills’ at Billytown, 2022