20251012, 2025

Stéphane Vanhove  

Stéphane Vanhove

Architect, painter, sculptor

Born on October 26, 1969 in Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo

Painting and sculpture are the two facets of my artistic work. They complement each other with architecture, making me a versatile artist, drawing strength from the rigor of the architect and the whims of the artist. These two facets liberate me in my creations.

I entered the world of art through ceramics at the age of 13. I immediately set up a ceramics workshop. Throughout my adolescence, I held an exhibition every year and sold over 2,000 pieces. Later, I developed my skills in ceramic sculpture, and upon my return to Belgium, I began sculpting in stone and wood, and now I work in aluminum.

I trained in monumental sculpture, which allowed me to produce large-scale works for which my architectural background proved invaluable. I spent a year working with the internationally renowned artist Olivier Strebelle on a monumental sculpture exhibited in Europe Square in Moscow.

Professional and family obligations forced me to put my artistic activities on hold for a while. I put art on hold in favor of architecture. But in 2015, I picked it up again and was awarded first prize for sculpture at the 2015 New York Art Expo. A statue entitled "For a New Beginning."

My artistic evolution is marked by a transition from figurative art to a more abstract style, though it still occasionally incorporates realistic touches. Like a thread to maintain a connection with the painting or sculpture. My paintings are nothing more than a transposition onto the canvas of my current emotions. But a transposition that has become abstract over time. They serve as therapy, as meditation, for me. They allow me to lay bare, and above all, spread my emotions of the moment across the vast canvas with a palette knife. My paintings, whose style is influenced by Gerhard Richter and Jackson Pollock, and undoubtedly by a touch of African soul, are created in the intensity of the moment. They are always the materialization of a moment, the transposition into acrylic of a feeling, an emotion as fleeting as it is spontaneous. An emotion that cannot withstand being revisited.

"Abstract canvases highlight a method: not to have, not to calculate, but to develop, to bring forth." (in, 1985 ) Gerhard Richter

Course

Exhibitions:

Current movement:

Abstract Expressionism

Representation:

In his completely abstract works, Stéphane Vanhove challenges the viewer to detect anything in the field of vision other than the pure elements of his art: color, gesture, and the layering of color variations linked to the artist's gesture, which stretches these concoctions in various ways, allowing random combinations to emerge from the surface. Stéphane suggests only a space where a random play unfolds, similar to that of a distorted mirror. The viewer is ultimately compelled to set aside any search for "content" that might arise from outside these narrow parameters and find satisfaction in the beauty of the object itself. We thus appreciate the numerous colors and transitions that occur in this painting, many of which were created outside the artist's complete control, just as nature often creates marvelous optical pleasures partly by design and partly by accident.