In Paris, at the Parliament Gallery exhibition space, figures and images dissolve and fade without disappearing. Using oil paint and various other mediums, artist Helmut Stallaerts creates a visual representation that interprets our time. Space is something that disappears, it expands and thins, it is a variable. What remains is our presence, which endures even without the tangible reference of our figure, opening up to the most intimate and profound representation of ourselves.

Helmut Stallaerts, “The return”, 2025, oil and wax on canvas, courtesy Parliament Gallery

Technology adapts, connects and manipulates humankind, creating a communicative structure that alienates us from the physical world. However, this does not necessarily exclude us from reality. What is created is, in fact, a situation alienated from the concrete world, a reality in which the physicality of the body vanishes and everything else remains. Through various mediums, in the exhibition Sent through assumed bodies, artist Helmut Stallaerts interprets this theme, attempting to capture on canvas the impalpability that characterizes our lives. In his works, colors and oil pastels blend with wax on classic or jute canvases. Through lengthy creative processes, the artist arrives at the representation of evanescence itself, as in the case of The Return (2025). In this large canvas, we can observe a vast scene animated by figures that come and go; these are blurred and sometimes repeat themselves as if observed from behind very thick glass. A small, distant figure coinciding with the vanishing point of the work looks at us, creating a direct and powerful dialogue with the viewer, further accentuated by a figure sitting next to us who watches the scene, creating a bridge between the viewer and the space in the painting. Another detail in the work is a staircase found on the left, which breaks through the boundary of the painting, suggesting a continuation of the landscape.

Helmut Stallaerts, “Lin”, 2025, oil on human skull and mirror, courtesy Parliament Gallery

The same element can be found in other works, such as Lin (2025). In this work, a human skull is painted both externally and internally. The first to be revealed is the external part which, divided into a bright half and a dark half, represents two female figures walking up a staircase. Given the careful study of the posture and the construction of the landscape, it is impossible to understand whether the women are ascending or descending, giving a sense of indeterminacy to the composition. The same thing happens inside the object on which, made visible through a mirror, a metaphysical and evocative scene is painted.

Helmut Stallaerts, “Dakini with a lemon”, 2024, oil and wax on canvas, courtesy Parliament Gallery

The use of bones (this time cow bones) returns with the work Dakini with a lemon (2024), in which the figure of a woman holding a lemon and two spirals on the sides is painted on six square blocks created from a cow’s shoulder blade. In Tibetan tradition, the “dakini” is considered a female guide. This is depicted holding an everyday object which, decontextualized, creates a powerful and emblematic dialogue with the figure’s gaze. One eye of this is in fact white, referring to a reality that is not outside, it is elsewhere. The same elsewhere that the vortices on the sides of the figure recall, two black holes that refer to an uncertain and unknown reality.

Helmut Stallaerts, “In between”, 2025, oil and wax on canvas, courtesy Parliament Gallery

The same detail can be found in the work In between (2024). It is a self-portrait of the artist, in this case the eye even seems blind. The shadow / light division is also found in this work. In the latter, a shaded and backlit woman makes the seeds of a dandelion fly, which float throughout the painting. In the same half of the painting there is also the opaque eye which, however, bathed in a cold and penetrating light, seems to see more than the “normal” one in the shadows. This sharp and cutting light is also found in Among us (2025), a large canvas that shows us an intimate and delicate scene. A man and a woman inside a room are naked on the bed. He looks at his phone with his back to her, while she lies down and observes us. Her gaze doesn’t convey sadness, and overall the painting creates an ambiguous and suspended atmosphere, cold yet calm, safe and welcoming. Several details speak without being identified, such as the long yellow sheet that, running along the bed, seems to be the only element uniting these two individuals, so distant yet connected.

Helmut Stallaerts, “Among us”, 2025, oil and wax on canvas, courtesy Parliament Gallery

The entire exhibition Sent through assumed bodies, speaks of indeterminacy and dissolution. The figures appear and disappear from the viewer’s sight. They often engage directly and profoundly with the viewer, making even more explicit the correspondence between the scene in the painting and our lives, increasingly abstract and linked to an elsewhere that, with the technology we increasingly use, virtualizes reality, moving it outside the tangible world.

Info:

Helmut Stallaerts, Sent through assumed bodies
10/01/26 – 26/02/26
Parliament Gallery
5 Rue des Haudriettes, 75003, Paris
www.parliamentgallery.com

Samuel Tonelli

Always connected to the art world, Samuel Tonelli attended the course in Art Education and Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and furthered his studies with the two-year master’s program in Education and Cultural Mediation of Artistic Heritage. After gaining experience mediating in various exhibitions and teaching art history at the art high school in Bologna, he developed a passion for art writing, which he sees as a powerful means of expression capable of opening up visions, broadening horizons and enriching the understanding of diverse perspectives on reality.