Né en 1973, Bruxelles.

Bio

I have developed my work based on the practice of a careful reduction.

In visual art, my references are Abstractionists such as Frank Stella and Morris Louis Bernstein.

For the past 3 years, my work has been consisting of regular parallel stripe paintings and works constructed in flat 2 dimensional monochromes using industrial manufactured synthetic coloured duct tape. Over the past 10 years, I have used stripes in my work, first with black oil paint straight from a can and now with industrial duct tape.

I take duct tape from a toolbox and I stretch it onto a canvas frame or directly onto a wall. With this practice, I make a point to avoid using a brush or colour from a tube. My main point is going to the essential through a careful reduction.

I stretch the duct tape in a parallel manner following a consistent pursuit of the patterns of everyday life and of our visual culture. The duct tape is stretched in a manner so strict and precise that the work looks like if made by a machine.

The tape naturally organizes and compartmentalizes spaces and colours in a linear manner; delimiting frontiers and territories. I use a standard 5 cm wide duct tape, which is thicker than packaging tape and opaque. I use colours that heighten the nature of my practices; a basic black, one or two shades of intense bright flashy colours typical of the industries of construction, neon colours and metalized silver.

One of the common denominator of my work is a careful reduction to reach the most essential of things and ideas but also of the techniques, the mediums, the forms, … What I consider fundamentally important in this approach is that it creates room to explore and to open areas.

In one work, I stretch duct tape on to several wooden pallets. Later, I construct the pallets on a wall. With this practice, I purposely break with the orders of an art work, avoiding the usage of an easel, using industrial materials, confronting techniques, materials and forms. I purposely develop a universe of fragmented elements, which confronted to each other define their own DNA …. What I consider fundamentally important is to systematically exploit the weakness in the order and hierarchy.

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