A self-taught painter, Yves Zurstrassen has been exploring the pictorial medium with great freedom since the 1980s. Between lyrical gesturality and almost mathematical structuring, Yves Zurstrassen manages to propose spaces that break free from conventions, offering innovative painting that blurs the boundaries between abstraction and figuration.

Yves Zurstrassen’s works are the result of a very particular technique that plays with the collage and de-collage of paper forms, which he uses as stencils on layers of overlapping paint. Anyone fortunate enough to visit the painter’s studio understands the importance of these ecosystems, where everything is carefully organized. Labeled pigments promise an infinite range of colors, the various stencils form a vast and rich vocabulary, and the previous paintings, neatly cataloged on racks, provide sources and references that invite the construction of something new from the old. In the background of Yves Zurstrassen’s works, one often finds details from previous works, canvases that the artist views differently and gives a new direction.

On these backgrounds, perforated stencils of geometric shapes are applied, covered with paint, and then removed, leaving only the negative of the shape. Additional flat areas of paint with freer shapes are then added. Through this approach, Zurstrassen succeeds in infusing his works with a dynamic quality, a kind of constant tension between accumulation and loss, addition and subtraction. There is also a tension between precise structures reminiscent of Mondrian’s paintings and a more gestural, fluid movement, closer to Matisse’s collages. All these layers give the painting immense depth. The viewer then loses themselves in the infinity of «windows» that unfold before them. Painted in his studio in the Luberon, the canvases presented here reflect the vibrant colors of the South. In this series, the colors are warm, bright, and vivid.

Sweet dreams… this perfectly describes the serene state one experiences in Yves Zurstrassen’s studio. A bit outside of time and the outside world, in a place bathed in light, surrounded by nature. Similarly to the jazz music that plays constantly in the studio, Zurstrassen works with geometric shapes and colors that do not seek to represent objects from the real world, but rather to create a pure sensory experience and a form of visual harmony. The Sweet Dreams exhibition brings joy and also serves as a wish for hope in an increasingly conflicted world.

Yves Zurstrassen was born in 1956 in Liège, Belgium. He lives and works in Brussels.

An important figure in the contemporary art scene, various institutions have dedicated solo exhibitions to him: Halle des Bouchers in Vienna (2024), the Picasso Museum in Antibes (2023), the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (2019); Museo Santa Cruz, Spain (2019); Brussels Art Salon (2014, 2011); Aboa Vetus & Art Nova Museum, Finland (2008); Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Liège (2006); and the Higher Institute for the Study of Plastic Language in Brussels (2000). Yves Zurstrassen’s works have also been featured in numerous group exhibitions: IKOB – Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgium (2020); Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany (2014); National Museum of Fine Arts in Riga (2010); Museum of Young Art in Vienna (2008); and the National Museum of Bucharest (2002). His work is exhibited in numerous galleries across Europe and in various fairs, such as Art Brussels and Art Basel.