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ABOUT
Steven Baelen (°1981) is a draftsman living and working in Ghent, Belgium. With a practice rooted in a passion to delineate his intimate surroundings with pencil, he has come to understand drawing in all its fragility and ephemerality. He has been using these values in order to enforce the power that a drawing tool can produce. These works offer a close look at domesticity void of humans, while at the same time becoming a playground where the identities of the different strokes interplay and exchange their roles, with a deliberate lack of resolution. As a result, the drawings melt and merge in one’s psyche, not on the page.
Steven is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts [KASK], Ghent (2006), and of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts [HISK], Ghent (2010). He is an alumnus of the JUNGE AKADEMIE (2011), where he developed his artist book DER RAUM IM VERZUG, which included an invitation to copy pages 7 to 54 onto a single sheet of paper. The Junge Akademie is part of the Berlin Akademie der Künste [AdK], founded in 1696, and is one of the oldest cultural institutes in Europe. In 2014, he was shortlisted for the MAC International Prize, where he created a wall drawing exploring aspects of physical spaces, both real and imagined. MAC International is the largest arts prize in Ireland and one of the few major art prizes in the United Kingdom. In 2016, he was awarded laureate in the ARTS category of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts [KVAB]. The Prize Laureate of the Academy is awarded by each of the four classes to a promising researcher or artist. Steven Baelen's work has been featured in different solo and group exhibitions in Belgium and abroad, and he was represented by Levy.Delval (2010-2019). The gallery, located in uptown Brussels, was focused on supporting artists from the young European and international scene. Work by the artist is held in private and public collections.