LET SEEK HIDE & PAINT

Charlie De Voet

28 March - 3 May 2026 | Penitentenstraat 29, 9000 Gent

We’re proud to present Charlie De Voet’s 2nd solo show with the gallery ‘LET SEEK HIDE & PAINT’ opening on the 28th of March 2026 at our space in Penitentenstraat 29, 9000 Gent.

Charlie De Voet (b.1977, lives and works in Ronse , BE )’s painting practice is primarily an investigation into space and materiality, both within and beyond the boundaries of painting. Central to his work is the behavior of oil paint under extreme layering, and how this contributes to optical depth, color, and texture. At the same time, he explores the limits of the medium by using paint as an autonomous, sculptural and skin-like material. By detaching the painting from its traditional support, he creates objects that not only present an image but also occupy space. His work balances surface and volume, illusion and physical presence. For De Voet, painting becomes not merely a window looking out onto the world, but a tangible, spatial experience in which tradition and experimentation can merge into a single gesture.”

‘LET SEEK HIDE & PAINT’ is Charlie De Voet’s second solo exhibition with BARBÉ. The gallery has presented his works in numerous exhibitions both in and outside the gallery. He has also participated in exhibitions at venues including Spazio Display (Parma, IT),  Art Rotterdam (NL), CAN Art Ibiza (ES),  Ballroom Project (Antwerp, BE), Plus-One Projects (Antwerp, BE), Hilvaria Studios Foundation (NL), Dewael Gallery (Antwerp, BE), the MERode Collection (Ronse, BE), Fred&Ferry (Antwerp, BE) Badaff, (Ghent, BE) and Zebrastraat (Ghent, BE), among others. In 2025 he participated in the inaugural exhibition of the ABBY Museum in Kortrijk (BE).

LET SEEK HIDE & PAINT

LET SEEK HIDE & PAINT is a play on and a distortion of “let’s play hide & seek.” Through this shift, four separate notions emerge that run as a red thread throughout his oeuvre.

LET refers to letting go, the cornerstone of his process-based painting technique, which can be considered quasi-meditative.
SEEK refers to searching and investigating, forming a second pillar of his painting practice. His work can be understood as an ongoing investigation and experiment into the relationship between spatiality and matter, both in two and in three dimensions.
HIDE carries a double meaning, both of which are important characteristics of his work. On the one hand, it refers to hiding; a deeply personal sentiment that regularly manifests itself in his paintings, sometimes in paradoxical ways. His works often function as a mental or physical dam, a shield, a defensive wall between himself and the outside world. The paintings become mental windows through which he can escape in thought, mental landscapes where his thoughts can dwell undisturbed, mental objects behind which he can spiritually conceal himself. At the same time, a paradox is present: as much as the paintings want to stand out and be seen, for instance when monochromes are presented in atypical spaces, hanging in the open air or in a ruin, pushing the contrast between the work and its environment to the extreme, there is an equally strong desire to be absorbed by them and disappear into them. The work seeks to reveal and conceal at the same time. A second meaning that can be derived from HIDE is that of skin, the skin of paint, which is likewise an essential element of his painterly research, in both two and three dimensions.
This leads seamlessly to the fourth notion, PAINT, which ultimately lies at the core of everything: the matter itself, paint, the alpha and omega of painting — the beginning and end of his art. Paint is everything to him and enables him to show nothing.

Through the distortion of the familiar phrase “Let’s play hide & seek,” a fifth element actually emerges; a hidden one (did you catch it?): the game. This notion is also an essential component of his oeuvre and refers back to a previous solo exhibition in which the concept of play was central to the show.