Raoul De Keyser in Print: Silkscreens, Lithographs, Linocuts, and Etchings

October 24–December 22, 2018

CC Strombeek in Belgium presented Raoul De Keyser in Print: Silkscreens, Lithographs, Linocuts, and Etchings, showcasing a lesser-known but integral part of the artist’s practice. In addition to creating evocative paintings and works on paper, De Keyser experimented with printing techniques over four decades. On view are forty-five works that not only reflect the formal and thematic evolution of De Keyser’s practice but also can be ordered more or less chronologically based on their techniques, which include silkscreens, lithographs, linocuts, and etchings.

De Keyser began making silkscreens in the late 1960s, at a moment when many artist were experimenting with printmaking in Europe and the United States. His first print was a silkscreen on cardboard: the box for Een verpakte gedachte (1967), a set of eleven poems by Roland Jooris (who would become a frequent collaborator) printed on cardboard sheets. De Keyser sent fragments of this work as postcards to friends. In the early 1970s, he shifted his focus to lithographs and started working more closely with the printers throughout the process to explore the different possibilities of various techniques. He primarily made linocuts during the 1980s and early 1990s. Later, he returned to silkscreen printing and made the only etching of his career, the beautifully sparse grid of Untitled (2004), over which he painted watercolor. The artist’s intuitive approach to painting is also apparent in his print works, which he sometimes rendered as unique pieces by intervening manually with watercolor.

Raoul De Keyser in Print was co-curated by the art historian Steven Jacobs and Wouter De Vleeschouwer, whose graduate thesis focused on De Keyser’s prints and who also worked on the first posthumous survey of the artist’s oeuvre—an exhibition of over 120 paintings and more than 50 watercolors and drawings at S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, in Ghent (on view through January 27, 2019). The exhibition at CC Strombeek is accompanied by a catalogue written by Jacobs and De Vleeschouwer, with an essay and a catalogue raisonné of De Keyser’s prints.

Image: Installation view, Raoul De Keyser in Print: Silkscreens, Lithographs, Linocuts, and Etchings, CC Strombeek, Grimbergen, Belgium, 2018. Photo by Dirk Pauwels