There was a time, in the days of abstruse commentators weighing up painting’s chances of death or survival, when we would have written with modest restraint that Michiel Ceulers pushes painting to the limit, so much so that it seems to lack kindness, so much so that it goes off its hinges, chipping away at the varnish of all certainties. I use the euphemism advisedly. Well, we’re far from it. There’s nothing iconoclastic about this attitude. Michiel Ceulers is no stranger to painting. Packed with talent, brush in hand, he excels. An attentive observer, he has rubbed shoulders with the old and the new with particular acuity. Yes, but a classic canvas stretched on a brand-new stretcher sucks. From then on, he salvaged all kinds of materials, preferably worn, stained or discarded. He flirts with three-dimensionality, framing his works with cardboard or polystyrene, collecting bits of mirror, chicken wire and any textile he can find. In the description of his works, there’s no reductive mixed media. Instead, he patiently lists the materials he uses in order, followed by bizarre, enigmatic, funny, triturated and multilingual titles, which may or may not have anything to do with the subject, titles that denote an equally hybrid culture, where references to pop culture, music, philosophy, history and art history, the Queer universe, cartoons or digital games, science – especially when it becomes fiction – intersect. Michiel Ceulers revels in references. On the art side, we’re happy to cite Dada, Rauschenberg, Kippenberger, Christopher Wool, Wade Guyton, Gerhard Richter, Raoul De Keyser, Dieter Roth… not to follow in their footsteps, but to look at them, to engage in dialogue. The result is paintings that will only be finished when they completely escape their creator. Paintings, or rather objects: painting as an object is more important than what it represents; depicting has become illusory in the tsunami of images that continually overwhelms us. Aware that he will add nothing to the history of painting, Michiel Ceulers prefers an attitude of sincerity, of authenticity, he says. What emerges is a hybrid, transvestite universe, dirty and flamboyant, full of glitter, a kind of garbage glamour, at once kitsch and based on classical foundations, something that will make you say: “What magnificent filth we have here!

Recently, Michiels Ceulers has been painting lots of birds, canaries, alone, often in pairs, often in trios. Sometimes they’re yellow. Or not. Sometimes they have their references. Or not. Of course, there are the two living canaries in a cage on the same canvas as Roger Raveel’s Het verschrikkelijke mooie leven (The terrible beauty of life). And Ceulers is very fond of Raveel’s painting (in fact, I’m also thinking of Marcel Broodthaers’ parrot). Of course, there are Kippenberger’s canaries, which like David stand up to the German eagle. Of course, there are the lyrics why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near, taken from Close to you, sung by Karen Carpenter, a formidable drummer and tragic figure if ever there was one. For a canary’s life can be miserable and precarious, especially if he’s sent to the mines. Of course, the canary is the most popular of domestic birds, but in a cage. Then there’s the canary from Looney Tunes’ Tweety & Sylvester. Michiel Ceulers also portrayed him, without the cat. The three who occupy us here are asleep,” explains the artist, “and their names are Pierre, Jacques and Jean. Strange disciples. And Ceulers adds that 30 pieces of silver are runningaway. It’s only a short step from Iscariot to Gethsemane. But also to Dr House (season 3 episode 9), to Michael McShane as Friar Tuck, to Blake and Mortimer and the Curse of the Thirty Denarii, to Johnny Silverhand in one of the endings of Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty DLC, when V chooses to deliver So Mi to Solomon Reed and says: You already know how you’re going to spend your last thirty? Personally, I’d say: “I’ll buy a canary.

– Jean-Michel Botquin