MAKE ART NOT WAR
Solo Exhibition by REMAUT.
June 28 – August 7, 2025 | Xochi Art Gallery

Xochi Art Gallery proudly presents MAKE ART NOT WAR, a solo exhibition by Belgian abstract artist Roger Remaut (b. 1942, Ostend). Bringing together works created over a five-decade career, this exhibition explores the transformative power of material, memory, and resistance.

Remaut’s mixed-media paintings are raw constructions built from found objects, layered pigment, scrawled text, and graffiti. Their damaged, weathered surfaces—full of cracks, scratches and stains—evoke urban walls that bear witness to time and trauma. Each work is slowly formed through a process of searching and erasing, evolving organically as instinct guides the hand. There are no linear narratives here. What remains are fragments—emotional traces that invite the viewer to construct meaning, even when none is intended.

The artist’s early childhood in Nazi-occupied Belgium remains a vital undercurrent in his practice. Rather than depict the past, Remaut transmutes it into texture—into surfaces that resist erasure yet refuse literal interpretation. In this exhibition, his canvases act as calls to action. Inspired by John Lennon’s plea to make love not war, Remaut proposes his own charged alternative: Make art not war. Through creation, he confronts destruction.

Introducing Roger Remaut

Roger Remaut studied at the Académie Ostende and began his exhibition career in 1982 with a show alongside his brother, Pierre. His distinctive style—rooted in informal art and built on material experimentation—has earned him recognition across Europe, with works now held in significant public and private collections including the Belgian national and regional governments and the Museum of Fine Art in Ostend.

Rejecting the constraints of traditional schooling, Remaut developed a highly personal visual language. He paints not to please an audience, but to interrogate his own experience. For him, the studio is a stage, and the act of painting is a performance of emotion, intuition and resistance. Ideas emerge from everywhere—nature, streets, television, books. Sometimes sparked by an interesting wall, sometimes appearing directly on the canvas, his works are not stories but reconstructions; assemblies of things that provoke, disturb and resonate.

“I don’t paint to please an audience — I am the audience, relishing in my own performance.” – REMAUT

MAKE ART NOT WAR is a powerful affirmation of art as a vehicle for renewal. In a world fractured by conflict, Remaut reminds us that creation remains one of the most radical acts of all.