In September 2013 Willy Van den Bussche began an ambitious project The Miracle of painting for NK Gallery. It was a tribute to Belgian painting. Although painting was declared dead several times in the course of modern art history, it has always been the source of great reinvention. Painting always progressed and maintained itself as a medium in varied ways. It was Van den Bussche's intention to demonstrate this on the basis of a series of five exhibitions of very diverse Belgian painters. The first exhibition held at our gallery was Hans Vandekerckhove. The second is Didier Mahieu. We would like to dedicate this exhibition of Didier Mahieu as a homage to the celebrated curator, whose tragic loss is shared by all and has left a profound and irreplaceable gap.
What follows is a brief press text written by Willy Van den Bussche
As a second exhibition in the series "The Miracle of painting" I present an artist who treats the medium of painting in a romantic but still semi-scientific way: Didier Mahieu. He makes work that breathes the atmosphere of a romantic landscape and at the same time he uses pictorial means that represent this feeling on a technical level. His paintings seem to arise from themselves. It is painting with a story hidden in a fictional reality. The exhibition is built up of multi-media resources on the topic of survival in extreme conditions. Numerous drawings and objects support the environal nature of the exhibition and make us partakers.
Willy Van den Bussche
Curator
Didier Mahieu has had numerous solo exhibitions, including The Brigitinnes - Le Jardin en Verre Brussels, Sketch London (film), Gembloux - Scaphandre, Soul-Bruges, the Economist Plaza for the Contemporary Arts Society London, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the PMMK in Ostend, the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, l’embarcadere Monceau les Mines France and the Museum of Guangdong in China.
Group exhibitions including the triennial Beaufort in 2003, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main, the Grand Palais in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen.
His works are held in numerous private collections and in Belgian and international public collections such as the collection of the National Bank of Belgium, the collection of the French Community and the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Mons, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille, the Maritime Museum of Istanbul and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Varna (Bulgaria). 6 films have been made about the work of the artist. Publications include: Les 500 chef d’oeuvres d’art belge Racine Brussels, Kunst in Belgie na1975 Antwerp, Triennale d,art contemporain sur mer Beaufort, Une Journee Ailleurs PMMK Ostende.