Dreams and reminiscences – intensified memories - shape his world. Despite being highly personal in its core, the world of Marc Kennes reveals a lot about our world. But not at first sight. The viewer is invited to look more closely. The viewer should allow him or herself to be immerged in this world and discover it, layer after layer. It is disturbed and disturbing. The dreams are often nightmares. Monsters appear. Pain seems to be unavoidable. The profound loneliness of the protagonist is clear. Beyond all this there is always light. Humanity appears, pain recedes and loneliness is the first condition of singularity. Every single work of Marc Kennes is a consistent environment.
The art of Marc Kennes is about deep tensions between the darkest of shades and the most sensitive light. The latter is the very essence of his paintings and etchings. In the dramatic and at the same time carefully built up layers of light lies the key. Here, his profound knowledge of the old masters can hardly be unnoticed. His colouration is always brilliant and judicious. His language lingers between the figurative and the abstract. Layers of thick impasto, thin strokes and drips construct and deconstruct figures in an overall figurative picture.