Geert Koekoeckx

°1983, Louvain, Belgium.
Lives and works in Berlare, Belgium.

Geert Koekoeckx’ paintings resemble collage-like theatre pieces – with a baroque twist - in which the painter, as the director, plays with the pictorial possibilities. He places odd objects on shaky, stacked pedestals while fluffy animals are jumping through hoops on multicolored stages. Often the depicted animals are deformed or have amputated limbs. Although it's never really grim. These contradictions are part of Koekoeckx' work. Scale differences are kaleidoscopically intertwined and elaborated details alternate with blurry zones, as a result of which the reality will unfold as a spectacular backdrop. The artist is questioning the artist's role. What are his options? How do the artist’s decisions relate to those of the beholder? Are small errors and little ambiguities not the most telling?

Koekoeckx creates a smooth interaction between drawings from his imagination and images from old magazines and books (e.g. Medical encyclopedia), internet, comics ... One drawing is the - often very intuitive - cause for another addition and so on. In this way, his works gradually take shape. One could call it a modern version of the écriture automatique. For the artist the narrative aspect is inferior to the intuitive aspect although language plays a very important role; often a painting starts with the title. In his recent paintings, Roman frescoes are a great source of inspiration like color palette, plants, the many motives and the vulnerability of frescoes Koekoeckx often quotes from art history:This based on themes, composition, visual language ..."