Raoul De Keyser: Drift, published on the occasion of the eponymous show curated by Ulrich Loock at David Zwirner, is organized around a group of 23 paintings that De Keyser (1930-2012) completed shortly before his death, which have become known collectively as The Last Wall. Imposing stark material and formal limitations, De Keyser was able to revisit in this body of work many of the major themes that occupied him throughout his nearly 50-year career: inconspicuous things close at hand, the landscape of the low lands where he lived all his life and the partition of the picture plane. This elegant catalogue presents plates and details of a selection of paintings, beginning in the 1970s, that emphasizes the tentative way De Keyser chose to explore his themes. Drift reveals an uncompromising artist who continued to pose new aesthetic problems for himself--even at the end of his life--and managed to come up with original and deeply moving solutions.
About the Author:

Since the mid-1960s, work by Raoul De Keyser (1930-2012) has been the subject of several solo exhibitions at prominent institutions. Since 1999, his work has been represented by David Zwirner. In 2000, a large-scale retrospective was presented at The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, which traveled to the Goldie Paley Gallery, Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. A major survey of the artist's paintings traveled extensively from 2004 and 2005 to the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Musée de Rochechouart, France; De Pont Museum for Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands; Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal; and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland. In 2009, his paintings were exhibited in a retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany and his watercolors were presented jointly at the Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal and the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin.

Ulrich Loock was born in 1953 in Braunschweig, Germany. He was Director of Kunsthalle Bern from 1985-1997, Director of Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland from 1997-2001, and Deputy Director of Museu de Serralves, Porto, Portugal from 2003-2010. He currently lives and works in Berlin as an independent curator, art critic and lecturer. He has curated numerous exhibitions of artists such as Michael Asher, Matthew Barney, Marlene Dumas, Robert Gober, Katharina Grosse, Eberhard Havekost, Maria Lassnig, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Gerhard Richter, Wilhelm Sasnal, Thomas Schütte, Thomas Struth, Luc Tuymans and Christopher Wool. In 1995, he curated a comprehensive show of Raymond Pettibon's work at Kunsthalle Bern, and included the artist's work in the 2006 show The 80s: A Topology at Museu de Serralves.