Exhibition 'The Big Assumption' I Jeff Kowatch

In The Bog Assumption, Jeff Kowatch presents a series of works that explore perception, memory and the quiet tension between what is seen and between what is assumed.

Jeff Kowatch (b. 1965, California) has lived and worked in Brussels since the early 2000s. His work is at the intersection of American abstraction and Flemish painting tradition. The use of glacis - the application of transparent layers of paint - forms the core of his painting practice and gives his work a special depth and luminosity.

Kowatch's paintings result from an intensive and lengthy process of construction and reduction. Layer after layer of transparent oil paint is applied, then partially removed and rebuilt. This cyclical process results in images in which forms gently merge and seem to float in an almost immaterial space. His work is imbued with a hushed, meditative quality and reflects an approach to painting akin to Zen philosophy: erasing the gesture in favor of an inner, contemplative experience.

In his drawings, Kowatch takes a radically different approach. These works, executed in oil bar on dibond, are direct, physical and distinctly colorful. The forms are more compact and clearly delineated, composed of vivid patterns and textures. Whereas the paintings are characterized by transparency and subtlety, the drawings, on the contrary, display a free, almost raw energy and an emphatic presence of the artist's handwriting.