Expo 16/03/2025 – 13/04/2025

TaLe Art Gallery presents the group exhibition Couleurs Tendances, in which five artists: Christophe Denys, Luc Vandervelde Lux, Ruth van Haren Noman, Tim Trenson and Wannes Lecompte engage in a visual dialogue about color and the power of abstraction. Each explores how these relate to composition, materiality and intuition, and how they create a field of tension within the work.

The title does not translate literally, but dissected into the words ‘tension’ (tension) and ‘danses’ (dancing) it reveals a deeper meaning. The tension is created by carefully weighing and combining colors into intriguing compositions. At the same time, the dance reflects the movement and vibration that brings color to life, like choreography unfolding across the canvas. Sometimes whispering and subtle, other times powerful and compelling.

Color here is more than an aesthetic; it is a language that resonates with emotions, memories and perceptions. In addition to color, the various degrees of abstraction take center stage in this exhibition. Whereas some works still contain subtle references to the visible world, in other artists these slowly fade into a play of lines and color planes, eventually approaching almost the monochrome. The figurative fades and gives way to a rhythmic interplay within the composition. Those who look longer discover a narrative that does not allow itself to be read immediately, but gradually unfolds in color and form.

Christophe Denys

Christophe Denys’ painting is abstract and devoid of conceptual meanings or contemporary

motifs.Without a fixed color palette, he is guided by memory and the painting process itself.

The variation in formats plays a crucial role in his imagery: each format requires its own writing,

where point, plane and line have a different impact each time.

His work balances between chaos and structure. Up close, the viewer experiences noise, visual terror

and movement, while from a distance a rhythmic, harmonious composition becomes visible. This

forces the viewer to actively perceive and unravel the paint structures. It is a graphic mix of patterns,

lines and planes.

Under the motto Kill Your Darlings, Denys breaks with his influences from art history and strives to

create an innovative, autonomous body of work. He paints not to represent, but to discover. His

canvases form a ceaseless stream of experimentation and layering. A never-ending story in which

each painting flows from the previous one.

Luc Vandervelde Lux

The work of Luc Vandervelde Lux now centers on matter itself. He interweaves various textures and

patterns into new visual narratives, arising from the need for a foothold in a rapidly changing world

and the revaluation of materials.

No material escapes his attention: carpets, fabrics, rubber, metal, wood, roofing and found objects

are brought together in layered compositions. What others throw away gets a new life with him. This

experimental intuitive process leaves traces. Leftovers are unraveled, rebuilt and connected into

aesthetic structures.

His work functions as a layered archive in which memories and unknown histories merge. Without a

moralizing message, he invites the viewer to reflect: on transience, recycling and the hidden stories in

everyday materials.

Ruth van Haren Noman

Ruth van Haren Noman paints disarmingly, honestly and directly. Freedom in her technique, subject

matter and artistry is essential to her. Her work balances between abstraction and figuration,

sometimes leaning toward one, then the other.

To her, painting is an adventure without a definite goal. Her canvases exude a dreamy, quiet

atmosphere, sometimes playful, often mysterious. Ruth draws a lot: diary notes, quick sketches of

shapes and colors, they are fleeting markings. These can serve as starting points, but her work grows

organically, like a fruit or flower slowly unfolding until the moment of completion. Each painting

emerges from an intuitive process, in which colors and shapes reveal themselves and transform.

Her work is an interplay of strength and subtlety. Behind the apparent simplicity lies an intense

process of contemplation, reformulation and perseverance. The layers in her paintings leave traces of

previous thoughts, rejected ideas and new discoveries. Each image, abstract or not, is a being with a

soul, a presence that invites the viewer’s personal interpretation.

Tim Trenson

Tim Trenson’s paintings bear the influence of his background in illustration and animation. The coarse

brush strokes and areas of color in his work are on the border between the recognizable and the

abstract. They seem to form characters living their own story within his canvas, like a window into a

parallel world. Trenson builds his paintings layer by layer, striking a balance between thoughtfulness

and spontaneous, reckless impulse. As you view his work, you discover more and more details,

automatically getting sucked into the narrative, which has no clear beginning or end, but unfolds like

a ceaseless cycle.

As Fred Michiels describes it, Trenson sees drawing and painting as inseparable. For him, drawing is a

complex, time-consuming and independent act, just as his paintings reflect the restless energy of his

exuberant formal language. He carefully constructs his works, constantly balancing between

thoughtfulness and reckless spontaneity.

Wannes Lecompte

The painting wants to be a painting! This credo has been at the heart of Wannes Lecompte’s practice

for nearly twenty years, in which he celebrates the act of painting itself. His oil paintings are more

than an interplay of color, texture and rhythm. Lecompte embraces and challenges chance in a his

deliberately slow working process. In front of a blank canvas, he waits patiently for the painting to

emerge. His brushstrokes intertwine, layer upon layer, brought together and surrounded by the white

void of the canvas.

Without depicting a concrete figure, Lecompte’s paintings unfold as poetic compositions. They invite

the viewer to experience their unique rhythm. The painter as a musician: he plays the drums and

composes playful, colorful notes on the canvas.

His works capture the intensity of a unique moment, a moment that simultaneously stills and makes

tangible the “drums” of our time. Wannes Lecompte’s visual compositions balance between density

and emptiness, between sound and silence.

Han Decorte (b. 1986) is a Belgian curator and scenographer. She received her master’s degree in visual arts from Sint-Lucas Ghent and a master’s degree in Contextual Design from the Design Academy of Eindhoven. She moves within the worlds of contemporary art, design and heritage. Besides curating exhibitions, she usually designs the scenography herself so that it enhances the concept and atmosphere of the expo.

Among others, she curated the contemporary art exhibition History of the Future, inspired by the heritage pieces of the Sint-Janshospital in Damme. In 2024, besides being a juror, she was also curator and scenographer for the exhibition Wire at the Texture Museum in Kortrijk, where she and a jury selected thirty artists from six hundred entries.

In March, she will again co-curate the Belgian Art & Design Affair at the Arsenal site in Ghent.

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