Lars van Roosendaal

Lars van Roosendaal (*1977, Leiden, Netherlands) is a visual artist based in Vienna whose practice engages with queerness, vulnerability, and the politics of visibility. Working across painting, drawing, and installation, his work explores emotional and psychological states shaped by intimacy, desire, shame, and social pressure.

Van Roosendaal’s compositions reflect on the ways queer bodies are seen, coded, and regulated—both from the outside and within the community itself. His visual language draws attention to how sexuality becomes a site of projection, fetishization, and control. Physical forms, gazes, and gestures are treated not only as carriers of identity, but as unstable territories marked by ambivalence and negotiation. Rather than positioning desire and danger as opposites, his work explores how they often coexist—mutually reinforcing experiences of pride, shame, and longing.

He studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven and later earned a degree in International Communication Management in The Hague. After moving to Vienna and completing his training as a graphic designer at the Werbe Akademie, he worked professionally in design before returning to fine art. From 2009 to 2012, he developed the visual guidance system for the Life Ball, at the time the world’s largest AIDS charity event.

Recent exhibitions—including Close Encounters, Pride, Shame & Prejudice! and I Just Want to Be a Good Boy!—demonstrate a continued focus on the affective dimensions of queer experience, as well as the social and symbolic forces that shape how bodies are desired, disciplined, or displayed.

He lives in Vienna with his husband and their daughter.