Here we find James Ensor’s extrospective humour, with his way of distorting reality to better expose its flaws. His characters—often represented by testicles—much like the masks of Ostend, sneer at the world’s emptiness. But where Ensor screams, Baele also knows how to be silent, evoking a philosophy of the daily life where the arrangement of objects becomes a scene of profound mystery.

In this series, Casanova becomes a melancholic alter ego. Bart Baele does not paint the conquest, but the moment when the seducer finds himself alone before his mirror, stripped of his artifice. This is where the artist distinguishes himself, transforming the darkness of his thoughts into ironic material. His painted scenes are like confessions, and the colors used like scars.

Despite the heavy emotional weight, irony is never far away. Bart Baele finds amusement in his own torments and invites the viewer not to take despair at face value. The Casanova Paintings is an invitation to understand our own paradoxes: we are all, in some way, Casanovas of the mind, desperately seeking a beauty that eludes us, all while laughing at our own failures. A crude and beautifully human exhibition.