Thomas Lerooy

The oeuvre of Thomas Lerooy is characterized by an inherent duality: it attracts and repels at the same time, it is recognizable yet alienating, it is humorous and serious, intimate as well as grotesque. Whether Lerooy draws, sculpts or paints, he is always searching for the limits of his medium or his subject. His enigmatic works challenge the logic of the viewer and leave the interpretation to their imagination. He uses recognizable motifs that he maniplates and thus undermines. In the last 15 years, Lerooy has made a name for himself with his sculptures and drawings. His paintings are a recent development that came out of a necessity. Lerooy stumbled upon the limits of his maniacal drawing technique and the constraints gravity imposes when working in bronze. He investigates and breaks through the codes of painting, which manifests itself in a tension between abstraction and figuration, sharpness and haze, structure and smoothness. They are light-hearted and charged at the same time, and thus put themselves and the reality from which they arise into perspective.

His work has been the subject of several institutional solo exhibitions in recent years, including Behind the Curtain at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium (2019); Vanity Fair at Gaasbeek Castle, Gaasbeek, Belgium (2018); Playground in Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (2017); and Beauty in the shadow of the stars at the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France (2015).

Lerooy’s work is included in public institutions such as TANK Museum, Shanghai, China; the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Center Pompidou, Paris, France; Province of West Flanders, Belgium; Belfius Art Collection, Brussels, Belgium, City of Brussels, Belgium, City of Puurs and City of Knokke, Belgium.