I'm a Belgian painter, living and working in Brussels.
The most important thing about a painting is what it doesn't show
The most important thing about a painting is the music.
My work is guided by flaws, fluctuations, small deviations from what is expected. It comes down to catching these and making them visible. I think they are essential in the making of art.
A painting is good when the image comes alive through the play of paint. And vice versa.
A painting is good when the play of paint is given meaning by the power of the image. And vice versa.
While making art, I produce a fair amount of waste. Such as stencils, painted tape, and scraps of paper with unintended but highly interesting shapes and colors. I then use these to create new work. Or I photograph them and digitally manipulate them, printing and re-cutting the resulting collage. Sometimes I take a photo of what appears on my screen and start from there, incorporating the digital qualities. In doing so, I explore whether the boundary between digital and analog can be defined as sharply as is generally accepted.
More than a fascination with patterns, I have a fascination for the fascination with patterns. Why the floral wallpaper, the Christmas sweater, four identical decorative rims on a car, the wood grains in the fake parquet, the handbag with panther motif, the water lilies floating on your screensaver? Previously, the hunger for regularity and confirmation was perhaps understandable, until the industrial revolution gave us that regularity. From then on, patterns were mass-produced and thus relegated to banality. Does that mean that today's penchant for patterns is a penchant for banality?
A pattern is only interesting when it mutates
Sometimes I think that my oeuvre is a premature post-apocalyptic coffee table book.
I try to mirror the decay and absurdity around us and to dissect patterns in what is left behind.
To debunk the bluntness of banality you have to put it in the spotlight
Sometimes I think that art would make more sense in a quantum mechanic world. Because it is very often what it is not. Like relief and war and lust and comfort and hope.
An artwork is always a reflexion of the world. Therefor an artwork cannot be unpolitical.
The political side of an artwork is the most important because that's the part not shown.
