Frank Van Hiel’s work features distinctive shapes, clean lines, an elegance in its selective colors and a contrast in its textures. The artist uses different paints within each composition: some forms are painted in a deep black acrylic, others are filled-in with graphite, while the rest is coated with vinyl or lacquer paint. The diversity gives Frank Van Hiel’s work its depth: when stepping-in close to a painting, one notices the horizontal lines of the brush versus the sooth grain of its backgrounds. These backgrounds, or this void, are often Frank Van Hiel’s starting point, from which a dialogue between form and color comes fill the frame and inhabit the emptiness. The clean-cut geometric abstraction however bears the mark of Frank Van Hiel’s hand: with pencil marks, gritty backdrops, a bare frame, and visible brushstrokes, the finesse of his paintings is roughened and endowed with a nuanced warmth. In that sense, the ‘industrial’ nature of the work gains its subtle poesy. Frank Van Hiel captures negative-space, faint shadows and the essence of his paints through a refined and predetermined abstraction.