FRANCOIS VAN DAMME at the WALL

FRANCOIS VAN DAMME

De:Com:Po

at The WALL
 curated by Vincent Surmont


17.10 - 31.10.2014

Vernissage: Friday 17th of October 7-10 p.m

François Van Damme, 1979 born in Belgium, studied illustration in St Lucas Ghent/Be and a specialisation in Ecole supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg. He lives and works in Ghent Belgium.

With each new drawing Francois Van Damme envisions new sublime geometrical abstractions. He investigates the possibilities of complicated forms/shapes derived from age-old ratios. It's an attempt that can be both seen as mathematical and abstract. The artist seems more devoted to geometry and to shapes than to any political, cultural or aesthetic cause. His work could be seen in relation with many other geometry-inspired 20th century modernists like Piet Mondriaan, Josef Albers, Kandinsky and Paul Klee, in the way they experiment freely on the canvas.

His drawings are non representational. They don't stand for something else. However the process of their formation is entirely the result of a series of spatial descriptions. This process can be equated to a nonlinear sequence of computations with points, spots, planes and lines. Paul Klee declared that ' art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible'. For him the very nature of graphic art lures us to abstraction. The combination of graphic elements produces forms that express the schematic quality of the imaginary with great precision.

The more emphasis the artist puts on the basic formal elements, the less well suited it is to representation.

In Van Dammes’ drawings formation rather than the form becomes the primary aim of art. He passionately embraces the art making method of decomposition instead of what has been taught in art schools for centuries, which is ' to make an interesting composition'. The artist uses destabilizing forms and techniques to challenge these compositional norms and as a means for a different kind of encounter, dialogue or resistance to conventional aesthetic orderings.

Always starting from the white sheet of paper, the artist employs the basic elements/tools which are the point, the spot, the pattern or the stripe.

In order for these patterns to become geometry, repetition is needed. No drawings here looks remotely the same, but is always built up by the same working method. In the end the form is achieved by a continual action. The artist rejects any notion of predetermined structure and sees the process of formation rather than the form as the primary aim of art. Dynamic figuration based on a world of diversity, where things move freely for the sake of going, without aim or will, and without obedience.