Marcus Vael - The Laughing Star

The Laughing Star is part of Marcus Vael's emblematic series exploring the boundary between popular iconography and the great masters of Western painting. Against a swirling sky in cobalt and indigo tones, an ecstatic figure with open arms seems to merge with the cosmos, while the stars themselves seem to smile — as if the entire universe shared this moment of absolute release. The work plays on the striking contrast between the blood-red of the costume and the deep blue of the night sky, creating a visual tension that immediately draws the eye. The dense, turbulent texture recalls the great Expressionists of the 19th century, while carrying a resolutely contemporary energy. A strong, instantly recognizable piece that probes our relationship to popular culture as a new collective myth.

Dimensions: 50 × 70 cm

Support: Fine art print on canvas, 2 cm borders

Year: 2024

Edition: 1/1


Marcus Vael was born in 1986 in Brussels, into a family where imagery occupies a central place — his father, a passionate amateur photographer, covered the walls of the family home with black-and-white prints that shaped from childhood the young Marcus's view of the world.

Very early, he was fascinated by the great masters of painting — Van Gogh, Klimt, Monet — and developed an intimate knowledge of their techniques, palettes, and their unique way of making light and color vibrate. But it is contemporary popular culture — cinema, visual icons, the global collective imagination — that gradually asserts itself as his true field of expression.

His artistic approach stems from this conviction: today’s myths deserve to be treated with the same solemnity and formal mastery as those of yesterday. By engaging in dialogue the aesthetic codes of the great masters with the figures that populate our contemporary collective unconscious, Marcus Vael creates works that resonate immediately, crossing generations and cultures.

A pioneer in using new digital tools in service of artistic creation, he advocates a decidedly hybrid approach where technology and artistic sensibility mutually nourish each other. His works, distributed to private collectors in Europe and the United States, are gradually establishing themselves as reference pieces in the field of post-pop contemporary art.

He lives and works between Paris and Lisbon.