Michel Frère was born in 1961 in Brussels, and died in 1999 in Morlanwelz, Belgium

This is one of the reasons the paintings are so thick. They are an unending accumulation of errors and disillusionments. 

Michel Frère

Michel Frère is a Belgian painter who had a meteoric career of 15 years that began in the mid-1980s and ended with his premature death at age 38 in 1999. At the outset he produced figurative works emblematic of the 1980s in Europe and the US. Soon he started to explore the material potential of painting by layering oil paint into animated sedimentation that combined seduction and abjection. He chose to frame them behind glass, creating a distance between the viewer and the work while integrating the viewer’s gaze and what surrounds it through reflection. He was widely exhibited by major galleries in Europe and the US where he spent the last part of his short life. He was free, both rebellious and loyal, addicted to risk-taking and entirely dedicated to pushing painting into unexplored territories.

The exhibition at KIN gathers together four emblematic large-scale paintings, a sculpture and a number of smaller works and archival material to better understand not only Frère’s work but also the time period that his work and life embody. It is a first attempt to open a new reading of his work, not only based on its formal uniqueness, but on the questions it carries, from informal art to queer culture.