In the 1970s and 1980s, Robert Devriendt made large, expressionist paintings. In the mid-1990s, he started creating minute, meticulously detailed canvases and destroyed almost everything he had previously made. The late 1990s saw his international breakthrough with small still lifes, whose illusionistic quality and eye for detail are deeply rooted in Flemish painting. The small works depicting fragments of wild animals are reminiscent of hunting scenes. Devriendt began repeating the same image fragments. When we examine the animals carefully, we discover small movements. When viewed sequentially, the works acquire a cinematic quality. Devriendt expands his motifs step by step. The artists also paints people and objects in addition to animals.
In-depth consideration of the painted image is one of the common threads in Devriendt’s oeuvre. His small-scale, illusionistic-realistic depictions demand our full attention. Not only on the image, but also on the material, the technique and the tactile value of the depicted surfaces. Devriendt continues to work explicitly in series. He juxtaposes motifs in order to convey a story. Of crucial significance, therefore, is the selection and ordering of the images. He swaps them around, and makes subtractions and additions, until the ultimate combination is achieved. Viewers approach his work in two ways. We view his work up close due to the precise depictions and exquisite painting style, but we also step back to see how the individual elements coalesce into a greater whole, both visually and conceptually.
Devriendt has published short stories to accompany several of his painting series. He makes gaps in the stories visible, in a very literal sense, by leaving relatively large spaces between the canvases. Recurring characters, animals, natural elements and objects also make an appearance. These are often drastically cropped and depicted in close-up. This enhances the multi-layered nature of the images and allows the works to retain their unfinished character. Each painting series only acquires meaning when confronted by the viewer. Every interpretation is unique. The meaning remains open and multi-layered, despite the occasionally descriptive titles, such as Le rendez-vous fatal [The Fatal Meeting}.
Devriendt’s oeuvre is akin to one long film or set of TV programmes, in which the various series serve as chapters. The artist uses a range of film techniques in his paintings. For example, he employs the jump cut, a term coined by Godard, in which two similar images follow on from one another, causing the footage to apparently jump for a moment. Devriendt often alludes to literary and cinematographic genres, and to art history: from detective novels to Murakami to pulp fiction, from Van Eyck to Bollywood posters, from cinéma d’auteur to B-film. In so doing, he does not paint tableaux, but rather constructs his own scenes involving models in specific poses, as well as editing backgrounds and adding elements. The illusion has to be perfect, so we can lose ourselves in it completely.
Several of the series made after 2008 have a strong undertone of violence and eroticism. A plethora of animals and attractive young women appear, both in the role of lust objects and victims. These examine the concept of desire. Raw aggression is a latent presence, whether or not this is sublimated into passionate love. A cultivated desire to view continues to be Devriendt’s fundamental motif: the act of looking and leering, to which the artist makes us an accomplice.
