'Marc Vanderleenen is perhaps the most pessimistic painter of this generation. His often dirty green, grey blue or taupe brown canvases reveal implicit images of decline, loneliness, anonymity and implosion. (...) Marc Vanderleenen does not tell stories, but he shows images of extreme desperation.

'Exercises in not articulating or barely articulating', he calls it. With paintings every movement is an extension of the previous one, every voluntary line pushes the story to another stage, to another image. Life is about doubt (...).'
(Marc Ruyters)