Antoine Roegiers is a Belgian artist who lives and works in France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, graduating with honours in 2007. His works combine drawing, painting and video art in highly-detailed works that reflect the artist’s fascination and long engagement with Flemish Old Masters – both in terms of style and subject matter. He has had solo exhibitions across Europe including in France, Belgium, Switzerland, as well as in China and the USA, and his works are regularly featured in group shows and art fairs across Europe. Recently, Antoine’s works have been exhibited Keteleer Gallery, Antwerp (solo show, 2023), MO.CO, Montpellier (2022), Wilde Gallery, Geneva (2022), Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris (2022).

Le grand embrasement (The Great Blaze) is the 45th painting in the series À l’ombre des nuages (In the shadow of the clouds). Roegiers started this series in 2020, during the Covid pandemic, which had a profound impact on his work. The series offers a visual narrative that recounts a single, continuous story. The tale begins immediately after Carnival, itself the subject of a previous body of work by the artist, titled Carnavals.

The narration of À l’ombre des nuages begins the day after Carnival, as imagined by Roegiers, when two characters wake up to discover that all the humans have disappeared from the earth and all that is left are skeletons – inspired by The Triumph of Death by Pieter Breughel the Elder (1562–63) – collecting the masks left behind after the festival. As a foreboding storm looms, the two protagonists stumble upon a mysterious hangar which contains an aircraft, alluding to the work of the Belgian symbolist painter Léon Spilliaert. The series of paintings follows the flight of this aircraft, which travels to landscapes that have been returned to nature after the fall of humanity. However, during the storm, the aircraft is struck by lightning, plummets to earth and initiates a huge fire that encompasses its surroundings.

This painting captures the moment in the story when the fire grows to an uncontrollable scale, consuming everything and spreading across the whole canvas. The catastrophic subject of the painting alludes to the anxieties of today's society, regarding climate change and the precipitous existence of mankind.

In the words of the artist, the painting represents a wry commentary on present society: ‘Humour, seriousness and poetry come together to offer a reflection on the contemporary world in an allegorical way, while giving the possibility of laughing at ourselves.’

Le grand embrasement is the most recent work of the series À l’ombre des nuages; the story will be continued in further works by the artist which he intends to realise over several years.