In a few words, Christian, who are you?
I am a Belgian artist born in Brussels in 1963.
I can define myself as an artist of the emotion and the free expression belonging to the “figurabstraction brute”.
After an essential passage through the Academy of Fine Arts, I had to emancipate myself from the artistic techniques taught and make speak my instinctive emotions.
I paint and sculpt viscerally, in a state of regression, on the margins of contemporary artistic currents.
I give vent to my emotions through different techniques, drawing, painting and sculpture remaining my favorite mediums.
Primitive arts, African art, Oceanian art, Native American art, art brut, children's art have had a strong impact on me. I find my roots there.
When and how did you get started in your art?
As a child, I was already attracted to pictorial art. Tirelessly, I drew, and I painted, using everything that came to hand to achieve my ends.
Then, I took the courses at the Beaux-Arts in Brussels and once the technical academic principles had been acquired, I hastened to unlearn them.
Exhibitions by Dubuffet and Chaissac will be great revelations for me and will transmit to me what is for me still today one of the basic principles of my artistic approach: spontaneity and instinct.
For almost 30 years I fed on the neo-expressionism as well as “art brut”, primitive arts, children's art.
What does this discipline bring to you?
Art is my whole life. I think, I see, I hear “art” all the time.
The moments spent in my loft are for me a means of regression and retrospection. I manage to empty myself.
The theme that I deal with tirelessly is the human in all states trying to understand and I know that it is an endless work, but it is precisely this infinity that reassures me and tells me that the road is still long.
What makes your art unique?
My work is unique because each work is truly unique. I do not make any work in multiple copies.
Besides, I think it's unique in that it's instinctive, spontaneous, gestural, urgent, which I hope makes it STRONG. Each work is a part of me, a part of my soul that I deliver the moment I create it.
Finally, the current culmination of my work, which is made of a mixture of abstraction and figuration, is relatively unique.
What do you think are the most important qualities for an artist?
One of the important qualities that an artist must possess, in addition to the technical, "artisanal" quality, his curiosity, and his poetry, is his ability to intercept the eye of the spectator, to lead him to a reflection, to question his quality as a human being.
The works of an artist must be mirrors. Mirrors of our humanity, our memory, our vanities, our flaws and our fractures.
When I manage to challenge someone through the look of one of my works and engage them in a process of reflection, it's won!
Another quality, for me, is to remain yourself, to have your own writing and to work with all your energy and guts.
What are the particularities of a Belgian artist for you?
Being Belgian is already a particularity in itself, History having made this country what it is with the obligation to make compromises "Belgian style" among many different opinions. This gave rise to a particular Belgian attitude, different from other Europeans. Humble, without always taking themselves too seriously, a well-developed self-mockery, being different, a little crazy, shifted, while remaining coherent, being open to any form of artistic influence.
If we start from the definition of R. Magritte who says that “to be surrealist is to banish from the mind the already seen and to seek the not yet seen”, you are in full surrealism. What is surrealism for you?
The answer lies partly in the previous question.
Magritte's definition suits me well, it is to experiment, to seek paths of artistic development that make the work different, to develop new paths in work through research, errors and accidents and thus find one's own writing. different from others, while remaining yourself.
Why is surrealism important?
As I just said, this Belgian surrealism distinguishes us from others and in a very positive way, I think. These residues of Magritte surrealism have ended up incorporating our genes and our way of seeing the world, which means that we can be proud to feel Belgian.
What do you like in Belgium that you can't find anywhere else?
The answer lies in the previous questions. Search well!
