VW (VeneKlasen/Werner) is pleased to announce Eagle Mode, an exhibition of new works by Harold Ancart, opening 9 November.

Harold Ancart works in a range of materials, including pigments, soot, steel and concrete, and relies on the architecture of the exhibition space to guide his process, but it is the temporal, transitional and immediate quality of drawing that lies at the root of his practice.

Eagle Mode, Ancart’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, features a group of large murals that are as much about what lies upon the surface as what lies beneath it. These works, in black pigment, applied directly onto the walls of the galleries, suggest paintings, but the material is dust; beneath the varnish, beneath the paint, beneath the canvas, beneath the stretcher, these works are as much an energy as an image. Neither wholly pictorial or purely abstract, they are paintings without subject, windows without a view, mirrors without reflection.

Expanding on this conflation of the physical with the ephemeral, Ancart has made a group of sculptures for the exhibition. Cast in concrete, they mimic the benches familiar to painting galleries in museums, though the rough pebble-dash surfaces do not invite sitting. These are also tombs, just large enough to contain the artist’s body – a wink to fellow Belgium, James Ensor, who drew his imaginary portrait as a rotten corpse.

Harold Ancart was born in Brussels in 1980. In 2011 he created a major installation of works at VeneKlasen/Werner for the group exhibition MoDiMiDoFrSaSo, curated by Birte Kleemann. Ancart's recent exhibitions include Widows, Abtei Brauweiler, Pulheim (2012); Un-Scene II, Wiels–Contemporary Arts Centre, Brussels (2012); and Melanchotopia, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011). Works by Ancart are included in the current exhibitions Champs-Elysees, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and Young Collectors, Maison Particulaire Art Center, Brussels. Harold Ancart lives and works in New York City and Brussels.

On the occasion of the opening Harold Ancart will launch his first artist’s book Tomorrow, a calendar for the year 3000, published by Triangle Books.