a research exhibition by Ralph Leeten
“Many contemporary anxieties live inside us. Body and mind are thrown off balance by news, illness, and politics—shapeless threats that are hard to grasp. The urge to go outside feels logical: to feel the body again, and because the balance between rest and fight/flight is off. We swing to extremes: numbing through scrolling and easy series, or overcompensating with marathons and strength records. Those pulls toward both poles fascinate me.
I look at how we curate and appropriate nature within a managed landscape like Belgium, where trees are often planted, numbered, and pruned. Is nature truly serving our rhythm, or do we project that rhythm onto it? My work pursues that question through images.
This dynamic is also visible in media culture: the popularity of YouTube channels such as Outdoor Boys, Cyprien Outdoor Adventure, where comfort is deliberately exchanged for campfire, bivouac, and self-build—a ritual of ‘de-comforting’ to get closer to a so-called original self. At the same time, that ruggedness is both real and curated; this precise tension resonates with my work, alongside the opposite pole: pushing the body to its limits in (ultra)marathons or hikes in extreme conditions.”
Bio:
Ralph Leeten (b. 1999, Antwerp, BE) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in painting. He graduated from LUCA School of Arts in 2022, where his work evolved through sustained observation of local landscapes, arboreal structures, and the shifting relationship between humans and their immediate environment.
Leeten’s practice reflects on the contemporary condition of the Anthropocene through acts of observation and selection rather than research or narration. His paintings are constructed from found imagery that is deliberately juxtaposed, generating a feverish coherence through visual and conceptual friction between themes. During the painting process, Leeten builds extensive structures of thought, which are gradually reduced, leaving the painted work as an artifact — a residue of thinking materialized in paint. Emphasizing spatial depth and layered composition, his form of painting exposes simultaneity in both image and thought.
exhibition opening:
16 january
5-9pm
on view:
17 january
2-6pm