As a graphic designer and typographer, the combination of text and imagery has become a second nature.
But where a graphic designer pursues crystal clear communication, I seek ambiguity and confusion. I lure the viewer into the works with the tools of communication with a promise for resolution, but once in, the viewer is left to its own devices.
Hopefully triggered to come up with a personal interpretation.
The texts and headlines in the works are (as far as they’re legible) made up language with no predefined meaning.
They function as visual devices to convey an atmosphere and sometimes suggest a meaning.
The (pseudo) mystical symbols in the paintings stem from my personal fascination for the mental condition of human being.
To be more specific, my (sociological) interest in religion, delusional systems, occultism, miscommunication, secret societies, cults, idolatry, conspiracy theory (etc), is an important feeder of inspiration.
As far as the visual aspect of the work goes, I try to maintain a certain amateurish flavor of the untrained eye and hand in the paintings.
I almost never sketch, I tend to start painting with no predestined plan.
So the paintings always have a multitude of overpainted layers, due to the fact that the painting reveals its direction and meaning during the painting process.
Artist Statement: Art brut, folk art, anxiety, humor, compulsivity, expression, naïvity, superstition, melancholy, amateurism, ignorance, failure, graphic design, typography, symbolism, (secret) language, colour, signs, Walt Disney, (art)history, religion, ex-voto, idolatry, the golden calf, rituals, delusional systems, conspiracy theories, (mis)communication, propaganda, figuration, (anti)aesthetics, the malfunctional, confusion, the banal, the grotesque, the conscious, the sub-conscious, the irrational, the sublime, the infantile, Barbapappa, antropomorphism, nostalgia, vanitas, chaos, heraldic, pop culture, post-modernism and kitsch...
Images and text courtesy the artist
Images on view in the gallery below in order of appearance:
