Posted on
2026-09-01
In his solo exhibition, An Apple for the Road, Ben Sledsens presents a new series of paintings in which wonder, attentiveness, and imagination take center stage. The exhibition marks a subtle yet significant shift within his artistic practice. While his work remains immediately recognizable through its vibrant use of color, monumental compositions, and dreamlike imagery, this new body of work reveals a renewed search for spontaneity, freedom, and a conscious embrace of the naïve as an artistic strength.
This new series of paintings emerged mainly from an extensive group of works on paper that Sledsens has developed over the past several years as a freer and more intuitive counterpart to his paintings. Whereas a large canvas often requires a lengthy process of construction and refinement, paper offered the possibility of responding more quickly to ideas, observations, and associations. From these experiments grew new compositions, unexpected perspectives, and motifs that eventually found their way into the paintings. What initially began as a search for simplicity ultimately led to an expansion of his pictorial vocabulary. Close-up views of water lilies, rhythmic structures of reeds, floating flowers, an anthropomorphic cloud, and mystical landscapes introduce a greater sense of freedom into the compositions. Graphic rhythms and repetitions assume a more prominent role, while the paintings simultaneously retain a remarkable lightness.
Opposite – Catching Frogs, 2025
Exhibition runs through till October 10th, 2016
Tim Van Laere Gallery
Jos Smolderenstraat 50
2000 Antwerp
Belgium
www.timvanlaeregallery.com
