JOHAN CLARYSSE
Johan Clarysse works in series. His paintings, drawings, collages formulate questions about the status of the image as well as questions about the complexity of our human condition. His paintings attract and confuse, they dissect an image and at the same time reinforce it. This creates an intriguing oeuvre full of double bases and references, which is both playful and serious, clear and ambiguous, emotionally restrained and intense ...
Clarysse goes for a "subjective realism, in which forms and details are simplified. The alternation between suggestive and more finished parts, the use of saturated colors, the light-dark contrasts, subtle perspective distortions, the sporadic addition of texts and emblems, create a Claryssian atmosphere of its own. The tense moment just before or after a striking event and its psychological impact on the depicted figures evoke a world of wonder, alienation, introspection and ambiguity.
Although Clarysse makes use of an age-old medium such as painting, he is and remains a thoroughbred contemporary artist. For Clarysse, a work is not finished if it is flattering, but if it contains electricity. Painting is an ideal medium for him to create hybrid, ambiguous images. In doing so, he subscribes to a collective undercurrent in which many contemporary painters move. At the same time, he has developed a clear, individual writing through the many themes, motifs and style registers that he uses.
Clarysse likes to introduce 'elegant hiccups' in his work. They are always discreetly present, provide the necessary friction and keep the painting exciting. These are intuitive decisions by the painter that lead to the viewer being drawn back to the level of the image again and again. He himself says: “I want to create a complex mental and emotional space with simple means. I sense a number of things and let them quiet down in an image. By painting them, they are intensified a lot, but also questioned and contradicted. ”
(this text is a compilation of previously published text fragments about his work)