top of page

Elias_GHEKIERE

Ghekiere Elias Foto.jpg

My practice is largely shaped by the stylistic and technical side of making and how these can inform art and life. Fluctuating between painting, drawing, photography and sculpture, I structure the tensions that exist between modes of representation, materiality and technique. 

 

TECHNIQUE 

 

What started as a fascination for texture and form, moved to a more systematic focus on the perception of crafts and its place in modern and postmodern narratives. The term craft can signify two different fields within visual culture. On the one, hand it refers to the professional occupation of researching and developing techniques relating to a medium or material. On the other hand, it can summon the idea of handicrafts, which are foremost a form of leisure, within a social framework. 

Craft can also be described as an attitude and a desire to do a job well for its own sake. It is a form of research, which starts from the material itself and continues by gradually discovering and working with its restrictions- through locating and resolving problems. Consequently, ideas, possibilities and forms grow organically from the material itself. The latter process highlights an intimate connection between the development of technique and style. 

STYLE

 

The stubbornness to retain the plenitude of styles and modes of expression in an attempt to achieve harmony, attests of a desire to defy and destabilize the taxonomies that give rise to cultural hierarchization. It is by including techniques and styles from decorative arts (amongst others) into my personal syntax, that I question the validity and value attributed to them. In this eclectic fashion, composition is build more on principles of relationality/proportionality between components than on stylistic compatibility. 

bottom of page