° 1960

Born in Lokeren (Belgium).

Laurent Cruyt, also known by the pseudonym LaCruz, is an investigating painter.  Not only does he analyze how to paint, but especially what to paint.  The emphasis gradually shifts from a fundamentally pictorial to a predominantly conceptual investigation.  The thought process becomes more important, and the search for a legitimacy to paint comprises the true legitimacy of painting. 

Cruyt starts in the 1980s with abstract-expressionist and neo-geometric works, but owing to the fact that 'innocent' abstract painting had become impossible, the question arises as to the subject of Cruyt’s work.  He strives for what to him appears to be the most widely disseminated and well-known of abstract images: the TV test pattern.  He sees the test pattern as an ultimate form of geometry, a colorful geometric icon that engenders much living-room irritation.  Cruyt selects original images of test patterns, enlarges them and paints them with monk-like patience on canvas.  He then minimalizes his own pictorial input, whereby the painted image becomes smoother and evolves towards a perfectly complete clone of the test pattern.  The dimensions of the paintings are no larger than the TV screen itself.

In the middle of the 1990s, Cruyt shifts his focus from the image to the film screen.  By means of new painterly techniques like computer-airbrush and photographic prints, the artist creates monumental canvases of fleeting film images and bombastic logos from various film studios (Universal, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox).

In addition to the film screen, the television screen remains of great importance in his selection of images.  This selection happens fast and impulsively, on the basis of emotional associations and cultural references.  By freezing the moving image, it loses its context and becomes autonomous.  The translation of the electronic impulses on the picture tube to photograph and computer-airbrush with solvents on canvas, results in a radical abstraction of the original image.

The titles of his works often refer to a universal meaning (for example, they frequently refer to the Book of Genesis) and contrast with the everyday of the flood of images that bombard us daily.  He reveals the hidden poetic power of images that were not first conceived as art objects.