The Interviews

MC: Can you tell me a bit about your background and how you reached this point?

JV: I am an artist from Belgium, more specifically from Flanders which is the Dutch speaking part. I grew up in a small village near the city of Kortrijk, it was very rural and very calm living there. I went to an all boys school and it was clear that I was thinking differently from my class mates, I described things another way. I also started art classes after school and it became clear that art was my Language.

I attended an art high school with the idea of becoming an interior designer but that changed quickly, I had more to tell and was too experimental. After high school I went to KASK in Gent and was accepted to study 3D, Media Art. It was a course that wasn’t medium specific, this choice was perfect for me because I don’t believe in a medium. I believe more in the fact that the content or research of a project defines the form/medium. At KASK I also meth Veerle Michiels, We formed a duo for almost 10 years, our projects are almost always site specific.

I was blessed with fantastic teachers: Hans Op de Beeck, Manon De Boer, Anouk de Clercq, …

In my masters I developed a fascination for exhibition design and curating trough my internship in WIELS, where I was the intern for the Mike Kelley show. After my first Master in 2009 I started to be asked for shows and in 2015 I did a second master in research in art and design in Antwerp.

In 2018 I attended a Residency in Cité des Arts in Paris and formed with you guys the GOGO collective.

MC: It’s interesting to hear that you were at one time interested in Interior design. You use a lot of architectural elements in your work, so how has this evolved throughout your practice?

JV: This is correct, references to architecture or using it is part of the visual language of my oeuvre. Although I have to say that my work is not about architecture. It is more about a feeling, a experience ,a reference. In developing my work I discovered that architecture, homes, rooms and spaces have the power to be very personal but also very general. Very neutral but also very defined. For me this is an important part in my work in translating very personal experiences to a form that strips the anecdotal elements of my story and becomes a work that is relevant and open to the public. It is evolving because I get fascinated by elements of public space, city strategies, the language of the scripted space ect.

MC: What does your work try to communicate?

JV: I think my work communicates on different layers. First of all the aesthetic layer: the form of a lot of my pieces has an aesthetic that tries to please, it attracts, is charming, but in the same order it show that this form is also a construction.

For example the work: Mr. House, the puppet is charming and nostalgic but we also know that there is a puppeteer that is behind it. Or “Transit”, I show you a corridor and a bedroom but the bedroom is a video and the corridor is a construction.

All my work starts very personal, it can be an emotion, a fascination, a thought that puzzles me or a situation I am trying to deal with. As I mentioned before I try to translate this into a core concept without the anecdotal parts. I call this way of working FORM FOLLOWS FICTION, it means for me that the content drives the form. My biggest hope in making a work is that my core element is well translated into a form and that the viewer picks this op and translates it to his or her own life.

For example with “Transit” for me the piece is about being alone after a relationship, feeling lost and nowhere. The relationship part is filtered out an I worked around feeling and being alone and vulnerable. I started to work around the bedroom and how this is a place where we process things, then the corridor is also a space that is a transit area, we do not stay there, an in-between zone. These two elements I used to

build up a tension. The bedroom could not be reached because it was a video room so I made the viewer wait in the corridor, which I made smaller then normal. In this piece I was working on the psychological experience of the viewer. The video lures you in to watch longer and you become more vulnerable while watching it, you experience this in a suggestive way.

Other works are more analytical about social housing (A pile of homes).

MC: Which of your works do you feel the most attached to and why?

JV: Because of my way of working I feel attached to all of my work. They all have different reasons, some are very personal, others are pieces where I stepped out of my comfort zone. I always need some distance between me and my work to become attracted to them, that is maybe when I look back to older work I sometimes think “damn they are strong pieces". It is a strange thing to say but I see my work when it is made not longer for me but more like on their own functioning as pieces and I become their caretaker.

I prefer to give you some landmarks in my oeuvre:

“Us” is the first piece that was autonomous I was still a student but showed it in a big national show in Brussels BOZAR, I think this piece transitioned me from a student to an artist.

“Front” is a dialogue between artist Veerle Michiels and me. Most of the pieces are made in-situ. The collaboration is important for me because it shows that a dialogue between two solo artists is possible and puts both artists on a new level. Each project we make we learn about each other, the space, art and ourselves.

“A house is not a home” this work shows al my strengths the conceptual and analytical side but also formal and technical. I could not have dreamed that this piece would be realised in big 4meter by 7meter. I think this is a key work for me.

“MR.House” maybe this work is a piece that I identify myself with the most as a maker.

MC: Who are your biggest influencers?

JV: There are five women artists and three men that are a big influence on me as an artist.

Louise bourgeois, Tracy Emin, Anouck de clercq, Rachel Whiteread & Marlene Dumas

Hitchcock, Foucault, Paul Auster

MC: What do you think art should be or do?

JV: I think art should be relevant to a broad audience. It needs to connect, reflect, be open, be a critic, be loud, be subtle, be big and be small, but most of all be necessary for the maker and then it can become relevant for the public.

MC: What are you currently working on?

JV: The last year two topics are active in my research and that is the scripted space, how city’s theme parks are designed to control us and how they make us feel. It has a specific languages and I try to analyse and use it to tell another story.

The façade is another topic that I am working on. I see it as a conscious element how we want to be seen by the other and the world, maybe a mask that hides imperfections but it also betrays elements of how we are or how we want to be.

The work “Mise and abyme” starts from the Haussmann facades in Paris where Haussmann gentrified the old organic Paris in the iconic Paris we all know now. In this way a plotting our wound in the urban but psychological membrane of the habitants occurred. The look of Paris and its facade shows how it wants to be seen and hides a layer of strategies but also beauty and fragility.

Mise and abyme is a method to display a literary or visual work in another work of the same kind. The one ‘image’ is, as it were, embedded within the other. The installations have a clear facade en trough the facade you can see a scale model of a less perfect part of Paris.

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