Ritsart Gobyn b. 1985

° Ghent, Belgium
Lives and works in Ghent, Belgium.

At first glance, the paintings of Ritsart Gobyn appear to be a random collection of traces of a creative process. Paint splatters, spray paint, and smears cover unprimed pieces of linen, on which all kinds of collage elements such as pieces of tape, colorful snippets, or post-its are attached. The temporary character of the tape and the seemingly careless arrangement of these fragments suggest a sense of incompleteness — an incompleteness that places the viewer face to face with the process a painting undergoes before it fully reveals itself.
Perception changes, however, when it turns out that the tape, the snippets, and even the folds in the canvas are in fact painted trompe-l’oeils. Gobyn employs this painterly strategy not merely to showcase optical trickery, but to make the viewer conscious of the act of creation through the illusion of its outcome. In this way, instead of being a matter of optical illusion and painterly virtuosity, trompe-l’oeil becomes a searchlight into the artistic process itself, questioning the “status” of the painting as both image and object.

Old and modern masters enter Gobyn’s paintings not as nostalgic citations but as ghostly fragments: reproductions torn from books, with faded colors and visible edges. These iconic images, deeply embedded in collective memory, function as visual triggers that invite recognition and complicity. A Picasso or Matisse becomes not an original, but an illusion — a copy of a copy. By placing such fragments alongside everyday materials, hierarchies collapse between “high” and “low”: a strip of tape becomes a masterpiece, and a masterpiece just another fragment.

Underlying this practice is a broader reflection on how we construct meaning. Just as layers of paint and fragments build up an image, so too do stories, memories, and frameworks shape our perception of reality. By laying bare these constructions, Gobyn’s work emphasizes that every “truth” is provisional — held together by narrative, context, and interpretation. What may seem like trickery ultimately points to the very structures that define how we see and understand the world around us.

Ritsart Gobyn is represented by Gallery Sofie Van de Velde.