Philippe Vandenberg (1952–2009)

The four paintings by Philippe Vandenberg (1952–2009) exemplarily represent the Flemish artist's oeuvre, which the Hamburger Kunsthalle presents for the first time in Germany in a large-scale, monographic museum exhibition titled »Kamikaze«. The subject matter underlying Vandenberg's art picks up on current world affairs; it is drawn from literature and art history, myths and legends. The contextual and formal focus always lies on the extreme antagonisms which humans are faced with and which the artist endeavours to approach in both an abstract and figurative narration: the simultaneity of love and hate, beauty and ugliness, innocence and guilt. Vandenberg's art is marked by a great intensity that is unsettling and inspiring at once. Praised as one of the most important artists of the past decades in his native country Belgium, his radical and uncompromising oeuvre is yet to be discovered on the international level.