ANTWERP.- Tired dreams

There is something deeply unsettling in the work of Laurent Proux. His works are not in this world to comfort, reassure, or entertain; they are not a “comfortable armchair”, quite the opposite. This uneasy feeling is perceptible, though in different ways, in both series of works presented in the artist’s newest exhibition “Out of The Blue” at GNYP Gallery in Antwerp. The artist is in fact accustomed, both in his studio practice and in his exhibitions, to pursuing two distinct paths: paths that on the one hand engage in a subtle dialogue with one another, and on the other produce a friction, an extremely fertile short circuit generated precisely by their evident differences.

One trajectory brings together paintings whose subjects revolve around factory interiors where people are engaged in manual work. The images are derived from photographs taken by the artist in real factories and, in some respects, recall an aesthetic close to that of Socialist Realism, though stripped of any ideological rhetorics. They appear to depict small-scale manufactories, places where the human element still plays a central role: they seem to point toward a past that may be on the verge of disappearing.

Rather surprisingly, the strongest connection to the present moment emerges in the more oneiric works, precisely where one would normally expect a dimension outside of time. The second series of paintings is populated by strange human figures, sometimes immersed in a natural setting – though always a strange and unsettling one – and at other times placed in interiors suspended somewhere between the familiar and the dreamlike. Part of the unease we experience stems from the artist’s highly theatrical use of light and shadow. The images seem to evoke Paul Gauguin, yet they are produced in a time when no form of exoticism is truly possible anymore, in a world that has become far too small. At the center of everything, however, are the bodies: bent, deformed, almost on the verge of liquefying. These human figures are subjected to strange torsions or bloodless mutilations. At times, we find ourselves wondering how many bodies are actually present within the painting, attempting to solve a visual riddle much as we would when confronted with an image by M.C.Escher. The deformation is obviously beyond the realm of reality, yet I would hesitate to say that it resembles the typical distortions of our dreams – certainly not the dreams that, at least I, used to have until a few years ago. It seems instead to carry something of the digital dimension, of the distortions that might arise from the biases of artificial intelligence. It is as if, in Proux’s paintings, I find proof of something I sense every evening in the half-sleep before falling asleep: that the “reality” we constantly experience during the day through our devices is beginning to infiltrate our dreams as well.

In this light the images tied to industry and manufacturing return almost like a lifeline, like a reality that is more manageable, more comprehensible, less invasive in its heavy, metallic, mechanical existence. The painterly resolution is also completely different: where the figures engaged in work possess the stability of realist painting, the deformed bodies are fragmented into a plurality and richness of painterly marks that become almost kaleidoscopic, recalling certain solutions of post-impressionism.

Yet the most striking contrast lies in the poses, which become positions – human, and perhaps even moral ones. Opposed to the manual workers are these strange human figures. The bodies are not only deformed: they are lying down, collapsed. Above all, they seem to drag themselves along, exhausted, spent. Even dreams are tired. And dreams are desire.

A sensual and sexual dimension is indeed present in the paintings, but it seems to emerge only as a memory, as though we were facing characters destined to repeat an old and now useless script, almost out of duty. The meeting of bodies appears to happen by accident, perhaps only because two figures become confused with one another, melting together like candles in the sun.

Text by Antonio Grulli, Bologna, 2026