MATTHIEU RONSSE

A singular figure on the Belgian contemporary art scene, Matthieu Ronsse has, for over two decades, cultivated an organic and uninhibited painterly practice. His work seamlessly weaves together abstraction and figuration, classical references and contemporary gestures, in a jubilant and unrestrained approach to form. As art critic Guy Gilsoul notes, references to Rembrandt, Titian and Velázquez infiltrate his paintings like a “Trojan horse to force open the gates of our mental citadels.”

The exhibition brings together a brand-new series of around twenty paintings and installations. Titled Hotel Prado—in reference to a local hotel in his neighbourhood in Ostend, the Belgian coastal city where he lives and works—the show offers a fleeting fragment of Ronsse’s intimate universe: a slice of life unveiled for a few weeks within the gallery’s walls. The artist transforms the exhibition space into an extension of his studio, where chaos is transfigured into visual poetry. Ghostly figures, fragments of memory, and gestural traces converge on the surface of the canvas, bearing witness to an ongoing process—art in a constant state of flux, resisting all fixity. Into this evolving visual language, Ronsse introduces newer artistic references, notably American artists Paul Thek and David Hammons, as well as Colombian artist Oscar Murillo, underscoring the richness of his eclectic vocabulary.

Ronsse’s oeuvre unfolds as an expansive pictorial discourse in which experimentation and the sheer joy of creation hold center stage. His paintings embrace incompletion. None of his exhibitions is ever static; transformations may occur over time, revealing a dynamic and fluid approach to making. For the artist, the finished image is not the goal— what truly matters is the ongoing act of creation. Each painting becomes simultaneously a surface, a trace, and a tool: it is its own palette, bearing the imprints of its making and the deliberate accidents that infuse it with raw, intuitive energy. Ronsse rejects the notion of a predetermined curatorial path. Instead, he allows the works to present themselves spontaneously—welcomed in their raw, unmediated state.

Courtesy Templon.