Solo show
Opening
Thursday 15 May 2025
From May 15 to July 5, 2025, Galerie La Forest Divonne presents a long-awaited solo exhibition by Jeff Kowatch. The first in Brussels since 2021. It is entitled “Incantation”.
Jeff Kowatch will be showing a series of new works that are the fruit of a long gestation period, with Kowatch always working on his works for many months, and sometimes even several years, in contrast to the immediacy that surrounds us. Jeff Kowatch is in many ways a mystic, driven by a constant spiritual quest that has taken different forms over time, from the Catholic fervor of his childhood, to the nihilistic abyss of youth and, later, to the intensive practice of Zen meditation that has largely shaped his current painting. He draws on patience, long time, repetition of gesture and the search for a paradoxical balance between immobility and movement, energy and tranquillity.
Watching Kowatch paint, one thinks of a dance, a chant: an “incantation”. Like an extension of his meditation and a form of prayer. Looking at his works and his colors, we think of an enchantment for the eyes and the senses, a form of bewitchment, in short, that fascinates us and draws us into his trance. The colors ring out, the arabesques carry us into a world of materials and pigments that pull us into the surface of the painting.
The “Incantation” exhibition will be the occasion for the presentation in Belgium of the monograph devoted to Jeff Kowatch by Editions Skira. Published in 2024, 184 pages, text by Juliette Singer, Heritage Curator, Director of the Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille and the Musée de l’Hospice Comtesse.
