Antoine Goossens - AAAH

Antoine Goossens — The Serious Side of Play

At first glance, Antoine Goossens’s paintings seem cheerful and light-hearted — bright colours, toy figures, everyday objects that recall childhood play. But look again and something shifts. Behind the innocent surface hides a quiet tension, a dark hum of thought that turns play into reflection.

Goossens (born 1992, Belgium) studied painting at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent and now works in Kortenberg. His canvases balance on the edge between construction and destruction, between softness and hardness, between freedom and control. He paints like someone building a world and taking it apart at the same time.

The result is a kind of visual language — bold, graphic, and personal — where toys become symbols and colour becomes emotion. His work is playful but never naïve: humour, irony and self-awareness keep it sharp. The artist’s hand is visible, but so is his doubt; his joy in making, but also his questioning of what painting can still mean today.

In Goossens’s world, the child’s imagination meets the adult’s complexity. The paintings smile at you — and quietly ask you to think twice.

Antoine Goossens (b. 1992) graduated from LUCA School of Arts in Ghent in 2017 with a Master's degree in Visual Arts. From 2021 to 2023, he followed the postgraduate program at HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts). Goossens has since shown his work in approximately thirty-five exhibitions in Belgium and abroad, including four solo exhibitions. His work has been featured at S.M.A.K., Cultuurhuis de Warande, and in galleries such as PLUS-ONE, Zwart Huis, Josilda da Conceição Gallery, and Pizza Gallery, among others.