Upcoming Exhibition
Exhibition: 'Flower Power'
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Welcome to 'Flower Power' — a sanctuary of colour and form, where the silent language of abstract expressionism speaks to the quiet revolution within. The world today trembles with unrest. Voices clash, systems fracture, and the noise of conflict grows louder. In such times, rebellion often takes the shape of resistance — outward, loud, immediate. But there is another kind of rebellion, one far more radical: the turning inward. The willingness to look closely, to see clearly, and to unlearn what the world has taught us to accept without question. This exhibition is an offering — not of answers, but of openings. Each painting is a field of emotion, a terrain of the unseen. In their raw expression, these works invite a confrontation not with others, but with the self: its fears, its longing, its illusions. What you find here may not be beautiful in a conventional sense. But it is honest. It is awake. The flower — delicate yet persistent — becomes our symbol. It does not shout. It does not march. And yet, it rises through the fractures of the world with quiet defiance. In this exhibition, the flower transcends the garden. It becomes movement, force, vibration — a visual metaphor for emergence, for inner rebellion, for becoming. Some works erupt in saturated bursts of pigment, where layered petals push past the canvas edges, blooming in a riot of contradiction: joy and discomfort, violence and grace. Others move into stranger terrain — floral forms dissolve into gestural lines, strange symbols, cellular spirals, and echoing voids. These are not flowers as we know them. They are events — the moment of a seed splitting open, the wild leap from root to revelation. In one piece, biomorphic forms stretch skyward from deep navy blue, like a hand blooming into consciousness, pierced by a green thread of energy. Around it, planetary shapes float — a suggestion that even in chaos, growth finds its rhythm. The flower here is not isolated — it is connected to everything: cosmos, gesture, breath. Elsewhere, petals become architecture — framed in linear grids, yet escaping their borders with unapologetic swirls and spills. A red dot pulses like a heartbeat, centred amid curving lines and fields of green and white. These works flirt with control, only to abandon it. Their beauty lies not in precision, but in surrender. Across the exhibition, a quiet defiance hums beneath the surface. These flowers do not exist to please. They are not here to soothe. They are agents of transformation — not soft decorations, but soft power. They move through tenderness, tension, instinct, and abstraction. They do not conform to how a flower should look. They become how rebellion feels. This is the power we evoke: soft but unyielding, rooted and radiant. In every curve and colour, there is the same message: bloom, even here. In the breakdown, in the noise, in the disorder — the impulse to open still rises. That is the true revolution. Let the flowers guide you — not into comfort, but into courage. Not into escape, but into awakening. Let what blooms in you defy the shape the world expects. Let these works stir what sleeps in you. Let them disrupt the patterns. Let them remind you: the first revolution is always within. — With stillness and clarity Adrian Eaves 17/10/2025
Below is a beautiful text in French written by Eric Fabre for the exhibition 'Flower Power' followed by the AI translation in English:
Comment un peintre abstrait peindrait-il des fleurs ? J’ajoute pour être précis : comment un peintre de l’abstraction gestuelle, Adrian Eaves peindrait-il des fleurs en 2025 ? Réponse provisoire : en les enlaçant comme on enlace un bouquet de fleurs, comme on lie les tiges avec une ficelle. Geste vif et ample du peintre et geste de la fleuriste associés. Mais pas le bouquet en entier, la fleur seule, comment la peindre autrement qu’elle n’apparait, ce à quoi elle ressemble, platement ? Je dirai en mettant l’accent sur le mouvement qui anime la fleur, son élan vital. Seul compte la sève qui l’irradie par les racines, le soleil qui écarte ses pétales. Ce mouvement, cette énergie animent aussi le peintre. Il transmet cette fois-ci son énergie propre à la fleur, du moins celle qu’il reproduit sur la toile, de la même façon que la sève, le soleil pour la vraie fleur, celle qui n’a pas été encore peinte. Telle symbiose entre la nature et l’homme, la perception qu’en a l’homme, on la retrouve chez Cézanne et c’est vers l’orient qu’il faut se tourner, vu de l’occident, via Cézanne toujours, voie parallèle plus que ligne d’inspiration directe entre lui et les peintres poètes calligraphes chinois, il est comme le représentant, l’annonceur, l’instigateur du chemin qui nous mène vers eux. En retrouvant sur sa toile l’essence de la nature, du monde végétal, des fleurs Adrian Eaves parcourt le même chemin que Cézanne et les peintres chinois autrefois. Si bien que désormais il n’est pas davantage peintre gestuel lyrique que Cézanne n’était peintre cubiste. Il se place au moment précis avant que les choses de la nature, les évènements prennent leur forme définitive. Il s’en montre le complice. On assiste à l’éclosion, l’ouverture, l’apparition de la fleur, et cela sous nos yeux, et cela à même la toile. Tandis que j’écris ce texte défilent dans la tête les images du film où le peintre est filmé en train de peindre, assis sur une chaise, à deux ou trois mètres d’une série de panneaux qu’il entreprend de concert grâce à un pinceau mis au bout d’un long bâton. Il le trempe de temps à autre dans un seau à peinture rouge, également éloigné de sa personne que le mur où sont posées les panneaux à peindre, mais cette fois-ci posé sur le sol de côté. Je pense à Hartung vieux et invalide, dans sa chaise roulante, projetant avec une énergie folle éclaboussures de peinture sur la toile placée devant lui, des jets de gouttelettes, au moyen d’un appareil industriel. J’y vois chez lui des gerbes quand je vois chez Adrian Eaves des fleurs. Gestes similaires pour des productions que j’ai l’audace de comparer au vu de la ressemblance des façons de faire. Comment sortir du piège de l’abstraction gestuelle ? En peignant des gerbes colorées et des fleurs. Me revient en mémoire un tableau de James Whistler, Nocturne en noir et or, la fusée qui retombe. Tableau noir, pareillement aux limites de l’abstraction et de la figuration. Tout y est noir excepté des ombres humaines entrevues en contre-jour des lumières des départs des feux d’artifices, excepté aussi des traits et les points lumineux dans l’obscurité du ciel où crépitent ça et là les feux. Fleurs, gerbes colorées, feux d’artifices, autant de ruses pour approcher une figuration fugitive, vue de loin ou dans l’obscurité, comme en passant. Éric Fabre, le 7/10/2025
How would an abstract painter paint flowers? To be precise: how would a painter of gestural abstraction, Adrian Eaves, paint flowers in 2025? A provisional answer: by embracing them the way one embraces a bouquet of flowers, the way one ties the stems with a string. The painter’s broad and swift gesture united with the florist’s gesture. But not the entire bouquet—just the single flower. How to paint it differently than it appears, than what it resembles—plainly? I would say: by emphasizing the movement that animates the flower, its vital impulse. Only the sap that radiates from its roots, the sun that spreads open its petals, truly matter. This movement, this energy, also animates the painter. This time, he transmits his own energy to the flower—or at least to the one he reproduces on the canvas—in the same way that sap and sun animate the real flower, the one not yet painted. Such a symbiosis between nature and man, and man’s perception of it, can be found in Cézanne—and it is towards the East that we must turn, from a Western viewpoint, still through Cézanne. A parallel path more than a direct line of inspiration links him to the Chinese poet-calligrapher painters. He is like their representative, their forerunner, the initiator of the path that leads us to them. By recovering on his canvas the essence of nature, the plant world, flowers—Adrian Eaves follows the same path as Cézanne and the Chinese painters of the past. So much so that now, he is no more a lyrical gestural painter than Cézanne was a Cubist. He positions himself at the precise moment before the things of nature, before events, take their final form. He becomes their accomplice. We witness the blooming, the opening, the appearance of the flower—before our very eyes, and directly on the canvas. While I write this text, images from the film come to mind—where the painter is filmed painting, seated on a chair, two or three meters away from a series of panels he works on simultaneously using a brush attached to the end of a long stick. He dips it from time to time in a bucket of red paint, placed as far from him as the wall where the panels to be painted rest—this time placed on the floor to the side. I think of Hartung, old and disabled, in his wheelchair, flinging splashes of paint with wild energy onto the canvas in front of him—bursts of droplets—using an industrial device. I see sprays in his work, where I see flowers in Adrian Eaves’. Similar gestures for works I dare to compare, given the resemblance in technique. How to escape the trap of gestural abstraction? By painting colored sprays and flowers. I recall a painting by James Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. A dark canvas, also on the edge between abstraction and figuration. Everything is black, except for human shadows glimpsed in backlight against the fireworks being set off; except also for streaks and bright points in the darkness of the sky, where here and there the fireworks crackle. Flowers, colored sprays, fireworks—all tricks to approach a fleeting figuration, seen from afar, or in the dark, as if in passing. Éric Fabre, October 7, 2025
Previous Exhibitions
'Inside Stories'
Garage Cosmos - Avenue des Sept Bonniers 43, 1180 Bruxelles
‘Inside Stories’ is an exhibition of paintings that explore how the subconscious mind reveals itself, through the actions and feelings of mark making, to form imagery created through conscious structures. The paintings take form by incorporating Fibonacci’s rules, golden ratios, triangles and spirals and each mark made is different from the last. Nonetheless, the marks made before it partially remain to illuminate the journey and the results are paintings that are full of energy, depict the transcendence of time and bring to light the inside stories of memories once had.
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Drawing from abstract expressionism, the work might be considered to be process art. There is a sense of gratification taken from the marks made. As one journeys through the artworks, it is evident that this is a celebration of painting, and each painting’s final image is a consequence of that delight. Furthermore, there is a strong element of action painting, with splashes, gestural brushstrokes, and dripping. The use of mixed media, combining different materials, informs us that art can be made of anything and although many of the marks are consciously placed according to Fibonacci’s rules, rules are there to be broken and the variety of chosen media can result in unexpected, and extravagant works of art.
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In the painting titled: ‘Big Foot’, that appears on the exhibition flyer, the watery, colourful splashes of paint in the background indicate the presence of a head and shoulders, with the resulting drips falling off the bottom of the painting. To the left of the painting is what looks like a foetus holding a balloon in the top right corner, and its umbilical cord trailing off to the bottom left. There seems to be a representation of nature, with tree like objects scattered across the horizontal, a pathway to lead you into the forest, and it could be snowing with those thick white geometrically placed circles across the top third of the painting. Are those toes in the bottom right corner, and is this the ‘Big Foot’?
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Despite painting being declared ‘dead’ so many times, here we have a British Painter, formally trained in art 25 years ago, crossing art genres, proving that painting is still alive and well. Although, he doesn’t claim to be a part of any artist movement, or genre, to understand the work, one needs to forget the preconceived notions of painting and spend time wallowing in the sumptuous brilliance of mark making, oozing from each drip, splash and vivid expression of the brush mark. Let your imagination run wild, as these paintings provide a tapestry of colour and reveal the painter’s inside stories.