Op donderdag 13 Februari zal de vernissage doorgaan van 'Kunst op Kantoor', een initiatief van Smart. Hierbij presenteer ik een drietal werken uit de reeks 'Contemporary Temples'. U bent van harte welkom voor een hapje en een drankje vanaf 18u00 in De Winkelhaak - House of C, op de 3de verdieping.Meer tekst en uitleg bij de gepresenteerde werken vindt u hieronder.

Tot dan!
Quinten

About

Quinten De Meester is an Antwerp-based visual artist, mainly working in painting, printmaking and everything in between.  Artistic results are often hybrids and would be labeled as mixed-media artworks.

In 2015, he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (Belgium); in 2018, he qualified as an art therapist (Artveldehogeschool Gent, Belgium). The past years, his trajectory has been characterized by the exchange of working as a visual artist and art therapist in psychiatry.

A fundamental part of his work consists of researching the subject, which serves as the basis for paintings and graphic arts. Sometimes research can take the form of collecting photographic material (both found and self-made) or working with AI generated images based on the collected photographic material. Material technical research is moreover key to what he does. Actual material studies using paint, prints and drawings are important to look at the studied subject from different angles.

Thematically, different subjects have his interest. During his time at the Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, he was fascinated by sacrality and monumentality in everyday life. He especially found echoes of this fascination in large man-made structures, such as: hotels, ports, construction sites, highway overpasses etc. This theme remained important in later work (e.g. Contemporary Temples) when his focus shifted towards architecture and urban areas.

During his training as an art therapist at Arteveldehogeschool Ghent (Belgium), he came into contact with Psychoanalytic theory. Concepts, such as ‘the uncanny’, over time found their place in his works.

This, for example, by depicting extra large, alienating urban environments. To further achieve this, he plays with the thin line between recognizability and abstraction, which thus became a typical methodology within his work. Finding a way to convey the felt uncanny and the resulting alienation caused by such places is an ongoing research that will probably never end.

His latest works (Oneloners) follow a different approach. While the themes mentioned above remain prominent, an extra layer is added using text, exploring the interaction between words and images. While his past series can evoke a more sterile or desolate atmosphere, his ongoing work researches qualities such as absurdity and playfulness.

Contemporary Temples

Contemporary Temples is a series of mixed media paintings, drawings and prints. The aim is to research the formal qualities and aesthetics of functional and corporate architecture. Within this research, the relationship with the Freudian ‘uncanny’ or ‘unheimliche’ has been investigated, mainly through the use and experimentation of different media. Furthermore, it has been found that repetition of visual elements and the use of the right tone or colour are essential in evoking the uncanny. This is perhaps no coincidence, since Freud already mentions in his paper that the emergence of the uncanny has to do with the unwanted repetition or return of the same and to some extent the resulting feeling of being trapped. The latter has been investigated by depicting different types of enclosed spaces. A final element that is central to the works in the series is the presence of an oneiric atmosphere. This puts a soft cloak over the uncanny in the form of texture and the use of soft tones, but nevertheless contributes to it, as if the boundaries between a dream and everyday reality are blurred.

https://www.quintendemeester.be

https://www.instagram.com/quinten.de.meester/