Keijsers Koning is pleased to present Assumptions Abide, a two-person exhibition pairing Belgian sculptor Johan Tahon with American painter and sculptor Natalie Westbrook. The exhibition brings together two distinct bodies of work united by a shared preoccupation with the figure as a vessel to explore composition, art history, and the layers of emotive form. Both artists work in a flux state of form, allowing the viewer to experience fragments of a metamorphosis expressed through the figure.
Both artists have a full grip on their material and know how far it can be pushed not as an exercise, or to impress, but to aid in their visual search for a juxtaposition of assumptions: reality exchanged for fiction, a rejection of abidance.
Tahon (b. 1965, Menen, Belgium) has spent nearly three decades building a sculptural language rooted in the traditions of Rodin, Brancusi, Giacometti, and Lehmbruck. Working in plaster, clay, and bronze, his figures swell, fragment, and reform — their construction and craftsmanship left visibly exposed, wounds and scars intact as evidence of process. His work has been shown internationally, including the 2022 solo exhibition Umarmung (Embrace) at IKOB – Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Eupen, Belgium, and the 2021 retrospective Universus at MOU – Museum Oudenaarde.
Westbrook (b. 1980, Louisville, Kentucky) approaches the same instability from the surface inward. Her large-scale paintings and gypsum-and-marble sculptural heads draw on Baroque history painting and 17th-century Dutch vanitas, filtered through a contemporary graffiti sensibility shaped by her years as a muralist and scenic painter in New York City. Westbrook holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University and a BFA from The Cooper Union; her work is held in the collections of Capital One and the U.S. Department of State Art Bank Program, among others. She previously exhibited with Keijsers Koning in her solo titled Mother of Pearl (2022).
