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Frans Willems |
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Frans Willems
(1977) the son of a Belgian civil servant and his English wife, travelled widely (incl. 3 years in Congo) meeting very diverse people. Unsurprisingly his early work as an experimental film student at ‘Saint-Lukas Hogeschool’ Brussels, focuses on the interconnection of different realities.
He went on to explore this further through painting, with a poetic fantasy about the 'string theory’ ‘Interwoven Realities' (2000 – 2004). A new theme featuring the passing on of ‘D.N.A’ from one painting to another, becomes dominant amongst these later works. Prints created from earlier paintings become the genesis of following ones, producing several generations of work, thus mirroring the continuity and mutating character of nature.
The series ‘Internal logic’ (2004-2006) goes even further: incorporating this whole process of evolution into an individual painting. The starting point is a random intuitively painted abstract shape which, through the use of photography, computer manipulation, and projection, is continually repeated with different perspectives and scales. New and old shapes merge and undergo the same processes again and again, before being partially or completely erased. The result is a new esthetic unity which might hint at traces of its evolutional history, or reveal no more then a sense of strong ‘Internal Logic'.
2006 will be the first year in which Willems exhibits with actual artistic institutions. Apart from showing as part of 'Belgian Young Blood’ at the Apothiki, a solo exhibition of his work will be held In Berlin somewhere between September and November with H-l-E-R a new gallery project by Thore Krietemeyer and Jan Parth. And, thanks to a grant from the Honda Foundation, he has been given the opportunity to organize a show of his paintings in Japan later this year.
In recent years Willems has sought and received positive feedback and encouragement from such people as Luc Tuymans, Stefania Bortolami and Chris Dercon.
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