SOFACQ Gallery
Visual artist, performer and musician Joris Van de Moortel builds his work around the stigmata of his performances and the elements that color his daily living world. He dissects the material elements of his concerts, breaks them to pieces in order to obtain new objects that form the basis for new works (at the end of his concerts he breaks his instruments, throws paint over the cables ...).
From these fragments he draws inspiration to create a new work of art, so that the chaotic cycle of destruction and rebirth continues. His works are true boxes / objects, somewhere between photos, paintings and readymades. In Office Framing, Van de Moortel deconstructs the surface of a desk by arranging different photos of the architectural space in a certain way and adding materials such as an iron grid.
The neon lamp is used as a paint strip that was freely applied to a complex construction, of which the aesthetic play with the perspective is striking in the first place.
This assembly of materials (neon, wood, plexiglass, aluminum, steel, black and white photo, Duratrans print, tape) refers to the memory (after all, the title is: 10 years after) and creates confusion about the nature of the work. Is it a painting, a sculpture or a photo? In any case, the artist refers to the dream of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the "total work" pursued by the German romantics in the 19th century.
With the concept of the total work in which all art disciplines are mixed together, Joris Van de Moortel claims a place in the art tradition, even though he seems to be an iconoclastic innovator in all senses of the word.
Joris Van de Moortel was born in Ghent in 1983. He lives and works in Antwerp. In 2009 he graduated from HISK (Higher Institute of Fine arts, Ghent). In 2012 and 2013 he stayed at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. He participated in many important group exhibitions, including in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Germany, 2015), in the Villa Empain (Belgium, 2015), in the Palais de Tokyo (France, 2014), in the Maison Particulière (Belgium, 2013) , in the SMAK (Belgium, 2013). In addition, several personal exhibitions were dedicated to his work.
Van de Moortel Joris, Wax on, 2010.
Marshall, wax, 60 x 23 x 83 cm.
Van de Moortel Joris, Instructing the amory, case study 1, 2009.
Mixed Media, 30 x 30 x 30 cm