Jean-Marie Bytebier

The desolate ‘landscapes’ of Jean Marie Bytebier (BE,1963) , deprived of any kind of human reference, leave the viewer puzzled and terrified as much as delighted. The artist brutally breaks the canon of landscape painting: upside-down landscapes, scratched away, cut-out or doubled, confuse the viewer. Bytebier doesn’t give the viewer anything to hold onto. Obstacles, such as bushes and trees take over the entire painting and block the view that was supposed to bring solace. The toned-down use of colour, often pale and somber, economically applied, ultimately dissolve the landscapes into abstract monochromes. Fragmentation, zooming in and magnifying fades into the endless vastness of sublime nature.

(text by Roxane Baeyens)

Submitted by BARBÉ