2006 Participating Artists > Rik Vermeersch

|  |  | Rik Vermeersch |
Born in Kortrijk (1949) held numerous exhibitions in Belgium and abroad, he received a number of awards and was the winner of the 2003 'Louis Paul Boon' award. The sculptures and illustrations of Rik Vermeersch are pieces of the huge puzzle - the chaos - of life. The sculptures that this artist creates seem to come out of this chaos, this perennially unreal world. They are evocative and act as a stimulus to discover how, out of this chaos, we have come in a mysterious fashion to be in this world. The sculptures portraits and illustrations are fragments of a dream of the 'woman / non-woman’, a standing, naked, female human being what has abandoned the real life and lives on mummified in a chaotic dream. It could be said that Rik Vermeersch endeavours through his art to create order in the labyrinth of the universe of the mind. The sculptures are fascinating and spur us on to ascertain what they say in silence. Are they praying for the mantra of the timeless...? Rik told me that this is the essential aim of his work: to give the beauty and the horrendousness of reality 'as neutral a form as possible without judgement of quality as an entity'. It embodies the paradox of a still-standing movement which goes together with a moving standstill'. And this neutralization produces a hazy equilibrium, a somewhat soothing effect.. .Perhaps?' Walter Ertvelt - An oeuvre of serene despair |