He now laughs at the notion — “if painting died, it was for two minutes between 1981 and 1992” — but it took him years, and a trans-Atlantic relocation, to deprogram. His compositions seem to take a page from Pop Art, or at least from the comic books he’s read since elementary school. For Ancart, subject matter is just an “alibi” for making pictures, an excuse to work the pigment. For a while, he made paintings of flickering flames and extraterrestrial nightscapes, exhibiting them at the Bushwick- and Brussels-based Clearing Gallery. “Once you free your mind from painting having to be a certain way, you can do anything you want,” he remarks.

Source: New York Times September 08, 2020 20:15 UTC