Michel Mouffe

Belgian, b. 1957

Michel Mouffe (b.1957) lives and works in Brussels. He exhibits paintings since 1983 in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, the United States and in Asia (Korea, Japan, Taiwan)

For Michel Mouffe, painting is an activity that involves all of man's basic functions. He reinvents painting, exploring its foundations and its limits. Mouffe's works are painted paradoxes. They linger between presence and absence, inside and outside. They are built up out of many thin layers of glaze to create an almost immaterial surface which can be described as a skin, at once a boundary and an in-between. Mouffe renounces to the flatness of a surface, however without abandoning the idea of a painting ending up against the wall. Subtle protuberances come forth from the inside of the canvas. The skin is scarred and seems to be lived in, its pores are erotic thresholds between the familiarity of the Self and the strange beauty of the uncanny Other

In the paintings of Michel Mouffe the battle between line and colour has been put aside and line and colour are finally reconciled and work hand in hand to give visual expression to the abstract thoughts and ideals of the artist.
The lines break the monochrome surfaces in much the same way that Lucio Fontana's cuts marred the surfaces of his own works. In both cases, however, the lines were not meant to be regarded as wounds, but rather as tools that open up and thus liberate the paintings. The lines are rather scars, a remnant of the wound, but also a sure sign that the process of healing has been completed