CURATORIAL REVIEW | September 14, 2025
WALKING THE EDGE OF WONDER
Painting as a restless movement
between place and self
Written by Laura Acosta
A Practice Born of Urgency
There are artists who paint to master a technique, and others who paint to hold onto something—an image, a story, a sense of permanence. But Joséphine Verbist paints to move, to shift, to breathe. Her work is not a product of luxury, but of necessity. Painting is the place where her inner world finds oxygen—where the chaos of thought meets the clarity of gesture and composition.
Early in her life, that urgency was already present, even if unspoken. As a child, she colored her world with pencils before she had the words to name it. The childlike joy of tearing, gluing and painting is still present at the start of each work, bringing a sense of play to the process of exploration. Later, during her academy years, she found herself amid a culture of radical freedom that eventually felt like a cage. What remained constant through it all was the need to create. Painting became not a choice, but a form of survival. What began as a drive to survive has evolved into a search for universal resonance. The surrounding world with all its complexities inevitably flows into the work, allowing others to recognize fragments of their own experiences and emotions within it.
This sensibility—raw, vulnerable, and fiercely independent—still pulses through her work today.
The Art of Resistance and Reflection
What makes Joséphine’s work so vital is its refusal to settle. She resists decoration, linearity, and even resolution. Her paintings do not offer answers; they offer presence. They ask the viewer to stay, to observe, to feel discomfort and wonder at once.
The tension between beauty and brutality, between intimacy and estrangement, runs deep in her work. It’s a tension she does not seek to resolve, but to live through. "I paint to be."
Over the years, she has exhibited her work across the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Germany, and Italy. Her exhibitions have drawn not just public attention but collectors, architects, and readers, and have also coincided with the publication of Knalrood is mijn naam / Bright red is my name, a volume that unites her poetry and visual language.
Even with the inevitable interruptions—cancellations, illness of gallery owners, the unpredictable rhythms of life—Joséphine continues. That a life lived fully, with all its friction, can leave a trace that her paintings alone know how to hold.
Between Journey and Gesture
Joséphine’s paintings are not conclusive stories. They are fragments of an open-ended conversation, one she holds with herself, with the world, and with whatever refuses to be named. Her abstract compositions feel physical, as though the canvas holds the afterimage of something just out of reach—an emotion, a memory, a shift in perception.
Color is never simply decorative; it’s alive, restless. Her palette ranges from earthy browns and muted greens to bruised reds and glimmers of white. These hues don’t just describe—they suggest. They carry weight. Her brushstrokes are often layered, interrupted, raw. There’s no attempt to hide the process. In fact, the process becomes part of the message: missteps are allowed to remain visible, as necessary parts of the path.
This is also true of her relationship with space. In her large-scale works, absence becomes presence. Negative space is not empty—it breathes, it holds tension. Each painting feels like a still image of movement, a moment captured in the middle of becoming.
And in the background of all this is travel—not as a theme, but as a rhythm. With her partner, she ventures for months at a time into distant geographies, sleeping under a rooftop tent, encountering other cultures not from a distance, but from within. This nomadic rhythm seeps into her artistic language. Her paintings feel like emotional maps of those journeys—not illustrations, but resonances. They hold dust, distance, and a kind of silence that only arrives far from home.
A Voice That Lingers
In today’s art world, often driven by speed, novelty, and surface, Joséphine Verbist’s work slows us down. It asks not for attention, but for attunement. There is no spectacle here, no irony. Instead, there is sincerity, strength, and a lived poetics.
Each canvas is not a conclusion, but an invitation to be read like a book. Joséphine approaches her practice with a persistent sense of wonder, staying curious and continually exploring the edges of both her world and her work.
—Laura Acosta
Chief Curator & Creative Director, Arttyco
Written in Barcelona, September 2025
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Laura Acosta, Chief Curator and Creative Director at Arttyco, combines her background in architecture, interior design, and cultural management to create accessible and engaging contemporary art experiences. Her multidisciplinary approach emphasizes spatial awareness and deep audience connection.