Hunted Projects is delighted to present Ich heiße superfantatisch (Ich trinke Schampusszy mit Lachsfisch), a striking exhibition of new paintings by Belgian artist, Michiel Ceulers (b. 1986).

A blind man walks into a bakery and asks for eight poppy seed bread rolls.
As the baker gathers them, he asks: “Are you expecting visitors?”
“No,” replies the blind man. “But I’m going on vacation, and they have such lovely stories written on them!”

Language often disrupts the purity of painting, dragging the viewer into the confines of rigid, linear interpretation. A truly powerful painting, however, defies this impulse. It does not present itself as a puzzle to be solved, but as a cryptic terrain, rich with layers of meaning, waiting to be uncovered like the ruins of a forgotten world. Yet, even in this resistance, language weaves itself into the fabric of painting—subtle, unavoidable. We think, we react, we attempt to decode the painting’s structure. But in its most compelling form, a painting shatters that logic—a fracture, a slippage, where language dissolves into something more fluid, elusive, almost dreamlike.

The grid paintings, to me, are like the retelling of a joke. With each iteration, the story shifts, as if the punchline never lands in the same place twice. New dimensions emerge, layered in ways both visible and concealed. They resist being consumed purely with the eyes; their textures almost demand to be touched, a tactile engagement that beckons a deeper immersion. What secrets, what buried narratives might rise from their surfaces, as if whispering the punchline to an unsolved riddle?

And here I am again, attempting to give voice to something so raw and abstract, as though these works are more than they seem. If there’s a story at all, it’s one of pure impulse—of creation for the sake of creation. I make them because I want to. I revel in the act of making. It’s a quiet dialogue with the canvas, a negotiation of sorts, feeling its way, sensing where it wishes to go. Logic might tell me I could replicate them, yet each piece resists that idea. In their subtle imperfections, in their glitches, they come into being as singular, as distinct. And I am there, the first witness to their birth.

Another story might be that my fascination with abstraction began as a deliberate departure from narrative, drawn to its ability to silence, to mute meaning. But the irony is, in this very silence, language became indispensable to me. It emerged not as a clarifier, but as a means to subvert, to avoid the burden of explanation. The titles became a kind of Q&A, an exchange of voices offering varied interpretations, often speaking in different tongues, contradicting or dancing around each other.

The bird has been a silent, recurring muse—a spectral companion that drifts in and out of my work. Its form, almost talismanic, became a touchstone on my journey into and out of abstraction. Often, I would find these solitary figures perched on windowsills during my aimless wanderings through city streets. In their quiet, unassuming presence, I saw not just the echo of an image, but a deeper invitation to probe the very act of painting itself. The bird remains ever itself—whether stripped to bare essence, infused with raw emotion, or twisted into abstract forms. It is not so much a subject as a catalyst, a pretext, a threshold to cross.

I am compelled to showcase these contrasting facets of my practice as a kind of yin and yang—dualities that coexist, two sides of an endless dialogue. I delight in how they unravel one another, their interplay like gentle forces in a dance of opposition, tugging at the very threads of meaning. I arrange them in space as though I were speaking in a secret language, or composing the pulse of a song—each piece echoing like verses, bridges, and refrains, finding harmony and tension. Thus, the title nods to the rhythms of a Franz Ferdinand song, where dissonance and melody intertwine. 

Michiel Ceulers, 2024