Artistic Approach: 5 Axioms Everyone Already Knows

The End Justifies the Means (and the Media)

Since the 1960s, the public has been accustomed to very intrusive communication. Advertising and political messages are on the one hand stripped of any superfluous ornament and on the other hand filled with subliminal, seductive, pseudo-authentic, and pseudo-reassuring elements. To touch the soul of the audience, one must appeal to all the senses of the viewer.

Every Process is Sacred

Every artwork (and every communication) is based on a process, voluntary or involuntary, conscious or unconscious. From the moment an artist has chosen or started a process, they must respect the outcome of this process.

Say What You Have to Say

The idea of art for art’s sake is misleading. Every artwork exists only in a social context and inevitably conveys values and prejudices. The idea of individual expression in the romantic sense is appealing but leads to conformism. However, everyone has the right (or duty) to interpret artworks in their own way.

We Live in a Context

As many 20th-century semiologists said: “every expression is intertextual.” It would be a shame not to play with the symbols and icons used by our colleagues and predecessors. I like to place them in a new context and delight in the unexpected results.

Everything is Relative

Every vision is relative, including the works I produce and the axioms of my artistic approach. The imperfect is respectable. Sometimes everything is so relative that only humor can capture the essence. The world is governed by chance. I see no need to exclude chance and its imperfections, neither in the creation nor in the presentation of my works. Nothing is fixed.

Some artists that have been important for me

  • Erik Satie, for the way he ignored the standards and the rigor with which he pursued his own principles
  • John Cage, because he taught me to accept the world as it is
  • Frederick Rzewski, because he taught me not to accept the world as it is
  • Joris De Laet, because he taught me the importance of processes in art
  • José Saramago, for the same reason
  • Charly Morrow who taught me that every event can be bigger. Or smaller.
  • The Logos Foundation that blurs the border between sculpture, event and concert
  • Bill Viola, for the reintegration of an aesthetic sense and storytelling in an art form that used to be purely experimental
  • La Fura dels Baus that showed me that it is always possible to send a message in a stronger and more intense way
  • Robert Rauschenberg, for the strong expression in his work from symbols and media of his time
  • Marcel Broodthaers, because he was looking for the most effective means to get his messages across and because he was playing with intrinsic meaning in the media he used
  • The Flemish Primitives for having developed their language, as well as the composers of the Ars Nova
  • My wife Gerda Van Damme, no comment
  • Louise Bourgeois, whose spider always comes to my mind when I think of Bilbao
  • Marcel Duchamp, of course
  • Boris Vian, for his versatility, his humor and his vision of the world