Thomas Decuypere

BIO I SELECTED WORKS

Thomas Decuypere’s work stems from his combined passion for mythology and gaming, seamlessly merging the two worlds with himself as the protagonist. At the controls, he creates his own world, akin to a god pressing the buttons, with a clear dose of self-mockery.

This year, he graduated from LUCA School Of Arts.

Despite his young age, he has already exhibited in various places, including the Roger Raveel Museum, WARP,  Broeihaard, De Gaverprijs , University of England graduates (UK), 30 under 30 at Kunstenhuis Harelbeke, History of The Future, and Diskus. Several of his works have been selected for the 2024 Biennale of Painting, which will be showcased at Mudel starting from June 30, 2024.

Exhibition text by Jeroen Laureyns ( The Agency for Spiritual Migration, the Belgian section. Lecturer in contemporary art at Sint-Lucas Gent (LUCA School of Arts). Reviewer for the programme Pompidou on Klara (VRT)​​​​​​​)

(EN) The first time I encountered a meticulously painted work by Thomas Decuypere (b. 2000, Kortrijk) was when, in a flash while walking by in the painting studio of Sint-Lucas in Ghent, I saw a painted self-portrait with a pale blue mouth mask, in which the artist, in a classic three-quarter profile, looked at the viewer with anxious eyes. Or was the fear I saw in the piercing gaze so emphatically above the mouth mask mainly a projection of my own feelings? 
Me, who was already in such a lousy state mentally when the corona pandemic broke out in Belgium too in March 2020 and was afraid throughout the corona era? Not just of getting corona myself, of having to fight for my life in a clinic on an oxygen mask or, as a notorious respiratory sufferer, of getting lung covid, but above all of staying mentally upright when all normal manners were legally restricted?
So I'm not sure if the look in this self-portrait with mouth mask by Thomas Decuypere, also depicts the anxiety I link to the corona era, because there are also so many funny elements in the work that actually treat that theme with a certain lightness through references in title 'Level 3' and in the image to the iconography of gaming culture, making it almost seem like the artist, with his long, slithering snake neck coming out of the Mario Bros chimney and the computer cloud, he did, unlike myself, manage to conceive of the whole set of new rules of behaviour from the corona era as a game. Just with new rules of play in which you had to challenge yourself to reach the highest possible level.

Whatever of it 'Level 3' (2021) by the young painter Thomas Decuypere had created an image that had stuck on my retina and had also at least iconographically captured that historically short but socially profound period of the corona era in painting, by capturing something that was then ubiquitous in the street and media scene in 2021 - the mouth mask - and is already part of the anals of history, now that we can once again not only look each other in the eye, but also once again attach to the voice a mouth and all the other parts of our body language, which indirectly give so much colour, meaning and sense to encounters with the other.
And it has to be said: I was ill-prepared, having already looked philosophically through the critical eyes of Dutch landscape philosopher Ton Lemaire at the evolution of the representation of the landscape, in which the fear of our space turning into 'a technotope' suddenly seemed to be realised in corona that dystopia of a completely digitised social intercourse with man and space.
But it is precisely in that difference in humanity and worldview between Thomas Decuypere and me that, for me, lies the appeal of his art and the renewal of the old genre of landscape painting. Thomas grew up with the Gameboy console in his hands and the particularly fond memories he cherishes, for example, of caravan holidays in Spain during which he played Mario Bros with his father while the sun shone outside. 
Computer games were out of the question at my house in a family oriented towards museums and books but watching TV in the 1980s, and there was no more experience than being allowed to play pac-man or king-kong on a friend's machine in the playground once, but because of this, the primitive computer iconography that is such a prominent part of Thomas Decuypere's work is not entirely foreign to me.

The rudimentary spaces in which pac-man or king-kong took place are ultimately not that different from the more sophisticated animated landscapes of 21st gaming culture, in which the fantasy world of monsters and ghosts emerge from chimneys and a group of bricks appear on screen in the animated world of a cartoon hero like Mario Bros - a plumber turned hero.
It is these iconographic elements that Thomas Decuypere integrates into his 21st-century version of the landscape, as in one of his tentative last paintings 'Helios in the sky' (2024) in which the landscape looks almost like a painting by the Flemish primitives, but the angry sun in the sky, the chimneys between the lone trees and, above all, the three-dimensional brick frame with graffiti around that landscape make it clear that we are with both feet in the present era.
Thomas Decuypere's meticulous realism in his depiction of the landscape is ultimately not that far removed from the way those Flemish primitives once depicted that landscape in that innovative, seemingly realistic way, when you consider that these are 'composite and myhthological, or rather biblical' landscapes, such as the heavenly Jerusalem.

Thomas replaces ancient Christian iconography with a contemporary gaming variant and also harks back to ancient, Greek myths, which this notorious non-reader, nonetheless, tracked down thanks to a book by Stephen Fry on those Greek myths, because boredom during corona had caused him to swap the interactive plastic for the letters on paper once anyway.
The two hands of this painter preferred to hold a gameboy or a nintendo switch rather than a book, but clearly inspired his cultural imagination as much as the bound paper of yesteryear and is also symbolised in a beautiful green painting with his open hands, where this time a lightning bolt does not show the stigmata of Christ, but a lightning bolt runs through it, against the background of a green checkerboard with standing alone computer trees and bushes.
I myself once articulated in one of my series of classes, using the work of Samuel Vanderveken, how a young generation of artists were inspired by the so-called lower art forms like graffiti and comics to revive painting, and you can see how with that next generation, it is already no longer an obstacle to those high and low cultures merging conflictlessly. While studying painting at Sint-Lucas in Ghent, Samuel Vanderveken was still told that he should leave popular iconography behind in order to be taken seriously as a painter, but now the generation after Kasper Bosmans, Nel Aerts and Nadia Naveau is completely freed from that kind of reflexes. Because if there is now 1 thing that Thomas Decuypere does so smoothly in his first solo exhibition as an almost graduated painter at Sint-Lucas in Ghent, it is combining that Greek mythology with the popular visual culture of the gaming world.
The mirrored shield of Perseus with which he managed to defeat Medusa is here in the hands of Thomas Decuypere against in such a highly silvered version on canvas, so that it really works like a mirror mixed with the stylised cloud he so often looked at as a child in a wallpapered version of Toy Story. An iconic game cloud that also recurs in a Magrittian diptych in which sometimes as a plane it hides the view of the landscape, other times as a silhouette it provides a frame to look at that new window landscape.
The important thing about myths and Decuypere's painting is the moral ambiguity of the works that can be linked to the bloodlust of the tribunal of public opinion and the new digital pillory, but do not coincide with it, as in the work 'Poseidon the rapist', in which the artist uses himself as a model to give a new, funny twist to the story of the Greek sea god who rapes Medusa and is punished for it by the jealous Athena.
That human urges and the underbelly are of all times and even now, in this atheistic, Western part of the world, the gods just can't seem to get enough of unleashing revenge, jealousy, hatred, vanity... on the world, as if it were a game you have to try to win, a new, fruitful artistic chapter has begun in the painted mirrors Thomas Decuypere holds up to the viewer.
Let the game begin.

CV

Thomas Decuypere
°2000
Works and lives in Kortrijk (BE)

Education

2024
Master in Visual Arts, Painting / LUCA School of Arts, Ghent

Exchange in Fine Arts / UWE Bristol, United Kingdom

2023
Bachelor in Visual Arts, Painting  / LUCA School Of Arts, Ghent

Exhibitions

2024
BIENNALE VAN DE SCHILDERKUNST / Museum Deinze en Leiestreek / Deinze (BE)
CAN’T STOP THE GODS FROM ENGINEERING / solo exhibition / Barbé / Ghent (BE)

2023
‘<____>’ (SMALLER THAN, LARGER THAN) / group exhibition / Barbé / Ghent (BE)
BARBÉ X KETELEER GALLERY / group exhibition / Knokke (BE)
THE SEQUEL / GRADUATION SHOW / LUCA School of Arts / Ghent (BE)
PANIEK IN DE DISKUS / group exhibition / DISKUS / Aalst (BE)
WORKS ON PAPER / group exhibition / Barbé / Ghent (BE)
IN MEDIAS RES / group exhibition / Barbé / Ghent (BE)

2022
EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN UNTIL THEY GET PUNCHED IN THE MOUTH / group exhibition / Barbé Urbain / Ghent (BE)
YOUNG ONES / group exhibition / CAS, Contemporary Art Space / Ostend (BE)
HISTORY OF THE FUTURE / group exhibition / Sint-Janshospitaal en Godhuis / Damme (BE)
30 ONDER 30 / group exhibition / Kunstenhuis / Harelbeke (BE)
PLUSSING / WARP Contemporary Art Platform / Sint Niklaas (BE)
F-BLOCK GALLERY / Bower Ashton / Bristol (UK)
DE GAVERPRIJS / Cultuurcentrum De Schakel / Waregem (BE)

2021
DOOR HET DOEK HET SCHILDERIJ. EEN ZOEKTOCHT NAAR DE MEESTER / group exhibition / Roger Raveel Museum / Machelen (BE)
BROEIHAARD / group exhibition / Open Air Exhibition / Lier (BE)
WIJK8 / duo exhibition / Rooigemlaan 158 / Ghent (BE)

2020
BEHIND THE GLASS / group exhibition by Jonas Vansteenkiste / Harelbeke (BE)