The book launch will take place at WIELS Brussels, 15 February 2025. More information to follow.
Posture Editions is very pleased to announce Posture Pockets N° 6 ‘what the body can do’ with works by Walter Swennen, containing 40 paintings and gouaches created between 2018 and 2022, the integral exhibition at Galerie Nicolas Krupp, Basel in 2022.
‘(what the body can do)’ is a series of works on paper, from palette and test sheets, used to try out certain colour combinations, layers, gestures brush movements, and other ‘preparatory’ activities in the service of his paintings. When Swennen came across them later, he saw that some paintings needed only minor changes or additions before leading to a resolution.
“Painting is a physical activity, evidence of which can be found as much in the mess, debris and accidental side creations in the studio as in the finished canvases. All the actions of painting pass through the body. Yet when seeing these paintingsone is only vaguely aware that one has made them”, Swennen will muse, “It is hard to tell which one of me did it”.
The book includes a text by British visual artist and writer Tom Mason (EN/FR), who has been actively following Walters’s work for 15 years.
Walter Swennen himself adds some thoughts.
Walter Swennen (b° 1946 Brussels) studied philosophy, switched to psychology and later taught psychoanalysis. He initially started as a poet and happening artist before turning to painting in the early 1980s.