Artist: Michiel Ceulers
Exhibition title: A Condom over a Zeppelin
Venue: Island, Brussels, Belgium
Date: April 1 – May 8, 2021
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Island, Brussels
It seems like we ask for painting to constantly expose itself, or at least to visualize the scaffoldings that maintain its vitality. After all those years, morbid curiosity spread, confronting us to our voyeuristic desire to discover its secrets, maybe only to reassure ourselves that we’ll be there when everything collapses. With Michiel Ceulers, asking for a proof of painting’s vitality is missing the point. The question is more about exposure: can I tolerate the embarrassment if I am caught in my painterly love affair? A strategic answer could be to display it to prevent it: might as well expose my sex life.
In A Condom over a Zeppelin, the mock-heroism of figurative gestuality (that echoes to Bad Painting’s macho character) reverberates in the paintings, revealing the sources of the images as different forms of acquaintances: loved-ones are mentioned, songs transcribed in a clumsy and rather old-fashioned way, visual references to other painters are scattered here and there, traces of encounters (be it real of fictional) punctuate the images and painterly inside jokes can be found, as if the anecdotal character of the practice was inescapable. This unavoidability is put to contribution: paintings seem to generate themselves, agents in a continuous digestive process. In those inter-referential dynamics, Michiel Ceulers’s paintings affirm their own dependency to the history embedded in each pictorial gesture. This can also been seen in the porosity that they manifest. The canaries are cultural signs, but betray also a shameful attitude: in Dutch (the mother tongue of the artist), they can be referred as Kanaripik, and taken alone, pik can mean the dick.
The title of the exhibition, stripped of any verb, underlines the gestural substraction that is paradoxically joint to excess of materiality in Michiel Ceulers’ practice. The paintings are often composed of found materials, paint blithely smudges from the surface to the frames, gulping external elements in an endless cannibalistic and erotic quest. Here and there, thick drops of Liquin populate the canvases as brownish residues. Also called Fluid ‘n dry, this medium is normally used in order to speed up the drying of oil painting as well as to improve gloss. Here however, no gain of time nor glossy effect, only the residuals of what may well be body fluids. An uncanny effect builds up, as if the paintings were all too conscious of our own desires and sentimental guilt.
In Island, shame is on a par with performative self-awareness, staging Michiel Ceulers’s own attitude towards painting. In the final scene of the first Matrix movie, Smith shoots Neo in the Matrix, making Neo’s mind believe that he is dead. Trinity tells Neo that the Oracle had predicted her to fall in love with the One. Her indisputable love making him The One, he couldn’t logically be dead. Through this deductive yet sentimental reasoning, Neo wakes up and defeats Smith and his code. Reconciliation with painting follows here the same path, with complication and a tolerated dose of sentimentality that builds up vulnerable images. When you think you are losing grip on something, when it is constantly slipping out of your own hands or when you feel you are missing something, unmasking everything that is too much for you may be the best path to follow.
-Paolo Baggi
Michiel Ceulers (b. 1986, Waregem, Belgium) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. Ceulers studied painting at KASK, Ghent and thereafter completed a two year residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2011. Recent exhibitions include Subject sitting in darkened room, Barbara Seiler Gallery, Zürich (2020), Presentation Aerst-Colson collection part of solo show Vaast Colson: “Still some cream on the screen” M UHKA, Antwerp (2016), LAURA (Ein bisschen Schnitzel in Magen war mir lieber als ein Vogel in den Himmel), Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2015, solo); ’The man who mistake his wife for a hat,’ Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam (2014, solo); ‘Der Charme einer vorbeigehenden Frau steht in der Regel in direktem Verhältnis zu dem Tempo ihres Ganges’ Nogueras Blanchard, Madrid (2014, solo); Rien de plus qu’un théâtre d’idées fluctuantes et des échos de développements future, Arts Club, London (2014, solo); Wenn Kneipen-Debatten als Kritik zählen, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2013, solo); Fractura 2013 (2013); In-Discipline, Bonnefanten museum Roermond, Roermond, Holland (2013); een être ET ne pas en être, GeM – Museum voor Actuele Kunst, The Hague (2013); Rasterfahndung, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart (2012).
Michiel Ceulers, A Condom over a Zeppelin , exhibition view, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, A Condom over a Zeppelin , exhibition view, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “The result of the equation trying to balance itself out (B side)”, 2019 -2021, Acrylic, latex and spray paint on found textile, 52 x 46 cm, Island, 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “The result of the equation trying to balance itself out (B side)”, 2019 -2021, Acrylic, latex and spray paint on found textile, 52 x 46 cm, Island, 2021
Michiel Ceulers, A Condom over a Zeppelin , exhibition view, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “Schwule Malerei heute keine Ahnung, was es bedeutet / Ryle and Raoul having a conversation”, 2020, Acrylic & oil, pigments and mirroring plexiglass on canvas, 84 x 70 cm, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, A Condom over a Zeppelin , exhibition view, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “Fragment d’un discours de amoureux de Rolland Barthes (Pebbels; BAMM BAMM!)”, 2020, Acrylic & oil, pigments, mirroring plexiglass and foil on canvas 84 x 70 cm, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, A Condom over a Zeppelin , exhibition view, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “Exorcism of overdue whimsy / post modern archetype”, 2019 – 2020, Acrylic, oil, silicone mirror, staples and anti slipping pad on canvas , 40 x 50 cm & “Grand Ave / Wilshire Ave corner”, 2019 -2020, Acrylic, oil, silicone mirror, staples and anti slipping pad on canvas, 50 x 40 cm, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, A Condom over a Zeppelin , exhibition view, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “La treizième lettre de l’alphabet”, 2019 – 2020, Pasco markers, oil, encaustic staples and plastic foils on canvas on wood , 77 x 61 cm, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “La treizième lettre de l’alphabet”, 2019 – 2020, Pasco markers, oil, encaustic staples and plastic foils on canvas on wood , 77 x 61 cm, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, A Condom over a Zeppelin , exhibition view, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “Darts of Pleasure on a line / a Line of dark fantastic passion”, 2017 – 2021, Acrylic, oil paint, dymo strips, staples & screws on wood, 60 x 51 cm, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “Darts of Pleasure on a line / a Line of dark fantastic passion”, 2017 – 2021, Acrylic, oil paint, dymo strips, staples & screws on wood, 60 x 51 cm, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “Liza Minelli est un traitresse (big birds theory)”, 2018 – 2020, Spray paint, oil, staples, paper cuttings, glitter, diamond dust & liquin on canvas on wood , 55x 73,5 cm, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, A Condom over a Zeppelin , exhibition view, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “Solomon”, 2020, Oil and gloss paint on wooden panel, 57 x 60 cm, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, “Ich heiße superfantatisch (Ich trinke Schampusszy mit Lachsfisch)”, 2021 Acrylic, oil, spray paint, wood glue, dymo strips and mirrors on found mirror. Artist made frame cardboard & glue ,105 x 90 cm, Island 2021
Michiel Ceulers, A Condom over a Zeppelin , exhibition view, Island 2021