Guy Slabbinck (b. 1979, Bruges) is a contemporary Belgian artist based in Ghent. He studied art at the LUCA School of Arts in Ghent. Slabbinck creates paintings, drawings, and etchings infused with colour, constantly challenging visual tedium in search of a more figurative style of contemporary painting.

His recent work explores the act of painting itself and the status of the artist in today’s world. There is no nostalgia for the past; rather, he seeks to strengthen the artistic tradition while opening up new horizons. Often, he begins with an existing painting or traditional themes such as paradise lost, colonial history, and mythology. By navigating the world of classical painting, taking inspiration from Titian, Rubens, Manet, Delacroix, Gauguin, and Ensor, he studies and reworks layers of meaning to develop a fresh visual language.

Slabbinck enjoys appropriation, swooping into other artists’ “nests” like a cuckoo, following the tradition of attraction and repulsion: discovering styles, remembering the past, and moving artistic practice forward. Echoing Picasso’s maxim that “art is theft,” he believes that artists’ primary role is to enrich the world with emotion and imagination, rather than to pursue economic gain.

He has exhibited widely in Belgium and abroad, including solo and group shows at institutions and galleries such as WOW Art Gallery (Brussels), MSK Museum of Fine Arts (Ghent), Galerie Zwart Huis (Knokke & Brussels), NK Gallery (Antwerp),and the Wrocław Contemporary Museum (Poland).