Rik Vermeersch (1949) - Vissers

In response to ‘the art of estranging reality,’ Rik Vermeersch (born 1949) began in 1967 with drawing and painting people in their daily appearance. He sources his subjects from magazines and newspapers in which he sees people more as ‘objects’ than as ‘subjects’. Moreover, it is only up to him to enact the ‘presence’. The ‘redemption’ that is so characteristic of his work becomes increasingly clear.

Since 1970 his drawings and paintings have taken on a more digital character. To the painter’s great astonishment, this technique shows an analogue identity with the image structure of a computer print.

From 1980 he began alternating his drawing and painting with sculpture.

Because of the ‘erotic surplus,’ the woman became the main theme of Vermeersch in the early nineties. Photography forms the basis of his drawing, painting, and sculpture. He himself photographs his models stripped of as many ‘subjectivities’ as possible. They pose nude, frontal, without movement and environment, with a facial expression that repels sentiment.

Since 2006 the model appears in a real environment in his drawings and paintings. Less absolute now is the static female nude as primary motif; she shares her place with portraits — among others from magazines and newspapers — of moving or dressed male and female individuals.

Rik Vermeersch presents us with a relativizing realism that continually situates itself between the individual physical form on the one hand and the merciless, spiritual non-form on the other.

If it has undergone a small repair or needs to be done, see the last photo.