The Belgian artist Michael Van den Abeele (°1974, Brussels) is known for his multidisciplinary practice that includes painting, drawing, photography, installations, sculpture, furniture design, animated films, and video.
A central feature of his artistic strategy is the disconnecting of function and form. Van den Abeele transforms everyday objects such as potato chip bags, jeans, and irons into ornaments and symbols of desire, dismantling their original utilitarian value. This strategy reflects his critique of consumerism and his fascination with the useless, the decorative, and the artificial.
His work often contains cultural-historical references and anachronisms. He plays with styles and motifs from various eras, ranging from Mannerism to science fiction. In doing so, he explores how images and objects lose their meaning and how meaning transforms through repetition, reproduction and shifts in context. His oeuvre demonstrates a critical yet playful approach to visual culture in an age of overproduction and digital reproduction.
Michael Van den Abeele lives and works in Brussels. Since 2003, he has been affiliated with the Brussels exhibition space Etablissement d’en face, an independent artist-run art center dedicated to presenting contemporary artistic practices to an international audience.
The book Forked Apologies (published by Forest) was published in 2017, in which Van den Abeele compiles 25 texts he wrote at the invitation of fellow artists and architects over the past decade.