Staying on the subject of shows I got an early peek at, Kristof Santy’s solo show Bolero closed last weekend at Sorry We're Closed in Brussels. Featuring some of the works I saw during my visit last year (the studio shots), this important exhibition introduced a new body of paintings on cut-out copper plates alongside work on canvas and blueprint-like drawings on wax tracing paper, and was marked by the release of the artist’s eponymous monograph.
It was some years ago that I came across Santy’s practice, and the excitement of seeing new works from him never wore off. Originally, the self-taught artist began dabbling in paint, jump-started by genuine creative curiosity and fueled by appreciation for works by other artists he looks up to. But once that Pandora’s box popped open, things started getting increasingly exciting and varied. Driven by the challenge of capturing what he saw or experienced, Santy kept expanding the scope of his reference imagery and the ways and tools he could wield to represent it. Completely removed from storytelling, his entire practice boils down to an interest in how to paint something, and in how many ways there are to paint it.
And this is where the show's title comes from-Maurice Ravel made his most recognized composition, Bolero, by repeating the same motif over and over and over again and building it into an orchestral mantra. Well, Santy occasionally paints the same or similar motifs, but the show title reflects the same repeating curiosity and drive that keeps pushing him to paint anything from a door key to a dessert bowl, a comic-like airplane to a single boar guarding the forest. Whether conveying the cold shine of metal, the stickiness of a sugary glaze, fur, or bark, Santy loves nothing more than going DIY and inventing a new way to do so. In that process, the work's representational quality might be surpassed by the pure alchemical wonder of finely ground pigment and hardened binders forming small miracles on the support surface. And with that, the ceaseless repetition becomes the structure for something beyond what each individual part could ever be. —Saša Bogojev
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