Almine Rech Gallery is pleased to announce the eighth exhibition by Matthieu Ronsse with the gallery, featuring a new body of work.

The work of Matthieu Ronsse balances on a tightrope between construction and destruction. He creates the sketchy outlines of an image, then covers it all, or at least part of it; he tears it open, repaints it or completely destroys it, then ruminates on it and eventually rediscovers it in light of new connections.

Ronsse is not involved in conscious formal or conceptual conventions within his own oeuvre, although the age-old tradition of painting is always subcutaneously present. The art-historical references function more as random motifs in his work than as deliberate formalistic quotations. The characters that appear in his work are always portraits of people from the social network of the artist himself. The portraits each have their own dynamics and typical physical traits; the figures are sometimes depicted with accompanying attributes and are placed in an indefinite but always intriguing architectural or scenic context.

In this exhibition, Ronsse combines several storylines from his intimate atmosphere with objects he finds and collects, stories that he hears or reads—situations, people and things that he encounters in a rather banal way. The works originate in series, in a free, intuitive manner. They form the shackles of this temporary, nomadic studio inside the gallery space. It is a snapshot of the ever-growing and mutating oeuvre of Ronsse, who tempts the viewer to enter his universe, a world fueled by the collective subconscious.