Thomas Lerooy "The Garden of Exile" Solo Exhibition

Thomas Lerooy "The Garden of Exile" solo exhibition: May 29 to July 17 at Nathalie Obadia Gallery. Born in 1981, Thomas Lerooy is currently Belgium's youngest rising star, returning to tradition and myth, back to the origins of Western art history. Specializing in drawing and sculpture, he creates numerous magical, bizarre figures and signs of death within a magical, absurd world on the edge between humans, ghosts, and gods. His exquisite drawings are full of sensibility and precision, stemming from the aesthetic traditions of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo of the Renaissance. The theme of "vanitas (the emptiness of life expressed through skulls)" originates from the 17th century, further enriched by the terrifying and humorous absurdity of Belgian painter James Ensor; for example, in "The Listener," half of Mona Lisa and half of a skull portrait hang beside large iron chains, referencing death metaphysically within this magical, bizarre imaginative world.

His numerous sculptures are even more grotesque and absurd, such as "Garden," featuring a giant reclining classical head with fine buds and branches growing from it. The double sculpture "Need in Me" features a giant head on the statue's body. Through young people's dark humor and sense of absurdity, he intends to explore the deepest layers of human consciousness, entering the dark abyss of existence, constructing the limits of spirit and body, wandering between life and death, freedom and bondage, consciousness and unconsciousness, magic and imagination.