[from the pressrelease]
On March 7, 1990, Raoul De Keyser made twelve works on paper. They were all executed on the same type of paper in black, white and shades of grey, making use of the possibilities of pencil, ink, and gesso. Many exhibit the geometric forms that marked De Keyser’s work at that time, others seem to indulge in the invigorating action of scribbling, still others allow ink to pool and bleed, letting intention and inadvertency play out in the mark making. Seen together, this suite forms an inventory of sorts of De Keyser’s motifs on canvas at that time, referring—in some instances—to specific paintings and—in others—to themes and compositions that the artist had explored and would continue to in the years to come. De Keyser often worked on paper— speaking about this practice as a liberating and generative one. And while it was not unusual for the artist to make black and white versions on paper after works that were completed on canvas, creating them in such a formally concise series, and further bracketing them by the insistence on the day they were created, is singular in Raoul De Keyser’s oeuvre (…)

The series, March 7, 1990 is not only about looking back; it is a mnemonic device, but it also looks ahead. Remarkably, the motifs in two drawings would only later appear on canvases. The first, Oost, 1992, is an all-over based on the branches of a monkey puzzle tree, which appeared in his work in the years prior but never as such an abstracted field. The second, Noord, 1992, is a densely worked, dark canvas, which has a white line extending from the bottom at a steep angle into the composition. On paper, the impasto brushwork is done in pencil, and the white line in thick gesso.