Clément Jacques-Vossen
Clément Jacques-Vossen is a Belgian artist living and working in Brussels. His practice considers of small paintings (acrylic & ink) on paper, marouflé on wood. Those small formats are representing a fantasy world where kings, knights and legendary creatures are fighting for existence. They are in between drawing and painting. The battles or story’s that are depicting give a glimpse of the fantasy world that is living in the mind of the painter. Pink elephants are wiring city’s on there back, knights are fighting epic battles and roosters have lion’s feet. The paintings are made with intensive research about medieval manuscripts, 19th century images about history and contemporary culture. Al paintings start with this find image culture, facilitated by Instagram. Clément love history and contemporary fantasy (Lord of the Ring, Game of Thrones, …), it’s why you will see historical figures and historical events melting together with contemporary culture. With a great knowledge of art history and history, he creates new images full of symbols. Every object and every piece of the composition have something to tell about the story. The stories are most of the time created in an unconscious mode and are left unexplained and open for interpretation.
The second part of the work of Clément Jacques-Vossen, consist of large paintings is black and white. Those paintings consist of knights in full armor. The image of the knight is something that’s goes back to the childhood of the painter. As a child he played allot with figurines, Playmobiles and dress himself as a knight. But growing up and losing his naivety, he discovered the truth behind the man in armor. They where not nice gays making beautiful and happy battles, where the enemy was obvious. No, the truth is they were killing machines, fully equip for war. Nonetheless, they kept his interest.
Now they became a kind of self-reflection about himself and the world around him. It’s not clear if they are self-portraits or helpless protectors against time and live.
Artus Mundi