the following text is taken from the book that was published on occasion of the show Het alledaagse licht op / The Ordinary Luminous. The book is an initiative from Marleen Keustermans, designed by Arne Depuydt for Damnyou. productions, and edited by Erwin Keustermans. It contains 44 drawings and 4 texts by Frank Vande Veire, Bob Van Eerd, Tom McGlynn and Manfred Sellink.

Bounded Boundlessness

Some Remarks on the Drawings of Erwin Keustermans

Frank Vande Veire
27 April 2026

Erwin sketches; he is also fond of this word, of the modesty it conveys: “It is only a sketch, an attempt, a draft, a little idea I briefly put forward, or even a jest, a capriccio, a whim, something I do in passing, perhaps while awaiting something greater, more important, more comprehensive, more meaningful – which undoubtedly will never arrive and never needs to arrive...”

In any case, Erwin’s sketches do not evoke the spontaneous and unpredictable quality we associate with sketches. Erwin does not simply sketch away freehand. He avoids everything that smacks of écriture automatique, in no way surrendering himself to images bubbling up within him. He redraws photographs he himself has taken of landscapes or interiors, happy-go-lucky, guided by the intuition that perhaps something interesting might someday be done with them. You do not immediately see this in his drawings, but once you know it, you can begin to imagine it.

The photographs themselves possess nothing artistic. They are neither particularly picturesque nor beautiful, nor intentionally banal. They appear to have been made with a calculated nonchalance.

 

Jean Baudrillard says something self-evident about images. Every image is elliptical; it implies omission: abstraction, extreme reduction of information and dimensions, narrowing, the banishment of context, making it strange that what remains can still evoke a sense of reality, even more intensely than when we move normally through reality. As if the image were a miraculous gift emerging from nothingness.

A photograph, for example, freezes an event unfolding in time; it shows only a single moment, one in which we never truly dwell in real life (because we are always oriented toward what follows). It is two-dimensional, it frames, eliminates smells and sounds, perhaps colours as well; it is unfocused, rendering all elements in the visual field with equal accuracy – in short: the gaze of the camera is inhuman.

Erwin proceeds from this neutral, indifferent, radically abstracting gaze. He obediently redraws photographs. That is his point of departure, almost ironically naïve, amateurish. It reassures him that in doing so he will at least not be troubled by his imagination. He would therefore rather not be called an artist, by which he means someone presumed to excavate from reality something that escapes others. He remains radically faithful to the photograph, does not deviate, omits no tree or lamppost, moves nothing in the service of a composition that might appear more successful. 

 

Yet no one doubts that Erwin is an artist. For he does not simply draw what the photograph shows, nor merely what he saw in the photograph: what he sees within it appears gradually as he redraws what is there. But what does it mean to redraw a photograph? One can redraw a photograph only by distorting it, by un-drawing it, by unleashing it. Because he works with meticulous care, he already diverges profoundly from the photograph. Unlike a photograph, which captures a whole in one indifferent flash, he treats every element with the greatest possible care, excessively, like a madman incapable of distinguishing the important from the unimportant.

Under Erwin’s furiously scribbling pen, every element earns the right to be brought vividly to life. Every element teems and swirls; it swirls within itself without ever losing its contours. In that sense, no drawing tends toward the amorphous; the clarity of the photograph is preserved. Within the self-imposed obligation to reproduce everything visible in the photograph, Erwin permits himself a far-reaching wildness. If one operates only within clearly demarcated boundaries, one may rage limitlessly...

In the world Erwin reveals to us, everything trembles and quivers, as though a hurricane were hidden within all things. Everything seems quietly and discreetly mad, surrendered to a meaningless, frenzied proliferation, yet everything remains in its place. The disturbing does not disturb. They are merely scribbled-together sketches, delightfully wriggling and whirling.