Sven Verhaeghe

Sven Verhaeghe lives and works in Poperinge (BE)

 Birds Map, (2016) Ink and bird droppings on school card

Apart from paintings and drawings, the work of Sven Verhaeghe (1974) also includes video work and installation art. Landscape and nature are his main subjects, especially the (often disturbed) relationship between man and nature.

His work seems to transport us into the atmosphere of the idyllic landscape of the 18th and 19th centuries, but in contrast to these ideal images of yesteryear, the subjects of those days seem to have been forgotten or have disappeared. The background has become the foreground. Verhaeghe somehow manages to incorporate our history into his work without being too explicit or anecdotal. The work wavers between abstract and realistic. It seems timeless because it cannot be placed uncritically in the contemporary, but within the tradition, it is also strange. Verhaeghe's work constructs its time frame and dimension.