Désert
An Exhibition by Nils Vandevenne

Galerie Houg presents Désert, Nils Vandevenne’s second solo exhibition in Lyon. Featuring a new body of paintings, the exhibition continues the artist’s exploration of a sensitive form of figuration shaped by both the legacy of American painting and contemporary graphic imagery.

Following Best Regards (2024), an exhibition inspired by Vandevenne’s encounter with Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals, Désert marks a subtle shift in his pictorial language. Here, the influence of Philip Guston becomes more pronounced, giving rise to a simplified figurative vocabulary that supports open-ended and enigmatic narratives, drawing equally from early American comics and the history of modern painting.

Vandevenne continues to work in his preferred material: laminated wood panels. Incised and carved, the surface interacts with layers of paint and plays an active role in the construction of the image. The pale tones of the wood contrast with vibrant fields of colour, creating a space that evokes a form of inner desert.

Through these new works, the artist explores the uncertainty and emptiness that accompany the beginning of each creative process, transforming the painted surface into a site of projection, memory and the emergence of form.