Michel Buylen (Ghent, °1953) is a multi-faceted and headstrong painter, who never ceases to astonish with both his amazing virtuosity and his new take on centuries-old subjects; such as the nude (or the naked?), the child, the landscape, the sea as an obligate abstraction and the portrait as compromise and confrontation. Michel Buylen is anything but a conventional artist. Aided by acrylic, he succeeds in retranslating life, in all its diversity and nuances, enriching it with his own vision.
Each new work forms a window to a sublimated reality, sometimes poetic and moving, often distant and surprising. It is this combination of vulnerable beauty and mysterious estrangement that gives Buylen a unique place within Belgium’s contemporary art scene.
Member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Arts and Sciences, Class of the Arts
Licentiate Romance Philology, Ghent University
Work by Michel Buylen is held in various public and private collections.
He has been selected for the collections of The Flemish Community
(long-term loan to MuZee Ostend); Elzenveld, Antwerp;
ING Insurance; Groupe Courtois; Province of East-Flanders;
Galerie De Zwarte Panter; Museum of Fine Arts Ghent;
Ghent University (Rectory); Liedts-Meesen Foundation;
KVAB, Paleis der Academiën, Brussels.
KU Leuven, Law-faculty
