PRESS RELEASE
Lille Art Fair 2013 Stand G8
From 07/03/2012 until 10/03/2013
Lille Grand Palais
1 boulevard des Cites Unies
F-59777 Euralille Lille
MEMORIES of the 21st Century : BRAVE NEW, OLD WORLD
My paintings contain personal observations about my era in a collection of images (over the large time span of 1990-2012, brought together and critically illustrated by the titles). The series is being continuously supplemented. Through my fascination for the work of Goya, who expressed his criticism in his etchings and Black Paintings about his contemporaries, memories, testimonies of the war between Spain and France in the 18th and 19th centuries and the 19th century spirit of intolerance, I detect parallels with my own time. 200 years later, the human condition has barely improved. War is pervasive and spreads across our planet like a local wildfire, but with terrible consequences. Like biblical catastrophes, mankind destroys its environment, its habitat, its existence, its fellow man. One only needs to collect images to reinforce this vision, on which an installation of my paintings has been assembled.
The collected images MEMORIES FROM THE 21ST CENTURY are abundant and ubiquitous: prophecies, testimonies of revenge, oppression, blindness, extreme greed, vanity, megalomania and disruption, often by other phenomena such as globalisation. It is this 21st century subject matter with which I work: my era.
My paintings contain personal observations about my era in a collection of images (over the large time span of 1990-2012, brought together and critically illustrated by the titles). The series is being continuously supplemented. Through my fascination for the work of Goya, who expressed his criticism in his etchings and Black Paintings about his contemporaries, memories, testimonies of the war between Spain and France in the 18th and 19th centuries and the 19th century spirit of intolerance, I detect parallels with my own time. 200 years later, the human condition has barely improved. War is pervasive and spreads across our planet like a local wildfire, but with terrible consequences. Like biblical catastrophes, mankind destroys its environment, its habitat, its existence, its fellow man. One only needs to collect images to reinforce this vision, on which an installation of my paintings has been assembled.
The collected images MEMORIES FROM THE 21ST CENTURY are abundant and ubiquitous: prophecies, testimonies of revenge, oppression, blindness, extreme greed, vanity, megalomania and disruption, often by other phenomena such as globalisation. It is this 21st century subject matter with which I work: my era.
Painting is my medium, but sometimes also the object. Since art is transformation, the image is manipulated. It is the ethereal of reality, captured in a bearable form. The brushstroke is the creative medium and is invoked to the degree that it does not disrupt the legibility completely, but disintegrates it to varying degrees. It has been consciously applied in this manner and borders on the abstract. The medium is systematically maintained, but deliberately exaggerated to preserve the emotions. The form is unimaginable without digital design, and is thus bound to it.
Collecting is organizing a variety of objects in a sequence. This linearity leads to insights that one independent work does not. It delineates the trajectory of the road travelled, a road that was impossible to distinguish beforehand, but only emerges from a multitude of memories strung together.
Nevertheless, it always remains painting: an image of stratification composed of content, form, colour and brushstroke.
Many unique images, many of which are not on display, are included in my book, a special art publication printed in a limited quantity, accompanied by an essay by the young Bart Vandenabeele, Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy at Ghent University. Despite the content, durable images that introduce an important aspect of our era, the 21st century.
Collecting is organizing a variety of objects in a sequence. This linearity leads to insights that one independent work does not. It delineates the trajectory of the road travelled, a road that was impossible to distinguish beforehand, but only emerges from a multitude of memories strung together.
Nevertheless, it always remains painting: an image of stratification composed of content, form, colour and brushstroke.
Many unique images, many of which are not on display, are included in my book, a special art publication printed in a limited quantity, accompanied by an essay by the young Bart Vandenabeele, Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy at Ghent University. Despite the content, durable images that introduce an important aspect of our era, the 21st century.
In cooperation with Mad-Art ( http://www.mad-art.eu/kunstenaardetail.cfm?Kunstenaar=95 )