WILLO GONNISSEN
Willo Gonnissen's two- and three-dimensional compositions are subtle, poetic and cerebral at the same time. He plays a game of metamorphoses, shifts of meaning and associations. Often recurring motifs emerge such as a paper boat, a raft, a flying carpet, the sea, a cloud, a mountain landscape, a house or a walking stick. They refer to the free flight of the imagination and the idea of traveling as a symbol of boundless desire. At the same time they throw the viewer back to the banality of his existence through the use of inconspicuous things from everyday life.
The themes often mix with typographic elements and abstract forms to create ambiguous sign systems. A hook becomes a crescent moon, a comma becomes the shadow of a snail shell. Sometimes a square is a point, sometimes a flying carpet.
In a recent series of small paintings and larger collages, clippings and accidental residual shapes are placed together. In his search for meaning the viewer suspects solutions, but he never finds a clear answer and the insight does not go beyond guesses and conjectures.
Willo Gonnissen (° 1959) studied graphic design in Genk. His artist career started at the end of the eighties in the Il Ventuno art center in Hasselt. Exhibitions followed in Maastricht, Krakow, Antwerp (ICC, Galerie France Lejeune, MAS), Aachen (Ludwig Forum, Galerie Von der Milwe), Madrid (Arco), Berlin (Galerie M), Hasselt (Z33, CIAP, CCHA, Fashion Museum), Liège (Les Brasseurs), Sint-Truiden, Ostend (Galerie Benoot), Ghent (De Gele Zaal, SMAK), Brussels (arteVentuno), Borgloon (Gasthuiskapel), Genk (Manifesta 9, FLACC), Istanbul, Gaasbeek Castle, Ljublijana (Vžigalica gallery), Diest (Citadelarte), Deinze (Galerie d' Apostrof), Dortmund (Galerie Voss).