Fleur De Roeck: The Wunderwall

Fleur De Roeck (°1992 in Brasschaat, Belgium) graduated in 2014 in Graphic Design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Illustration however, never fully satisfied her creative nature and so she abandoned it after her formal education to explore the freedom of other mediums. The following years she evolved from collage to painting, installation and sculpture and broke through all the boundaries she learned at the academy. From then on, De Roeck’s process revolved around constant renewal and discovery.

When you’re standing in front of De Roeck’s works, you’re immediately captured. We witness the expressionist result of a one-on-one confrontation with the canvas. Her typically bright and vibrant colours celebrate this joyful battle and instantly set the tone. A mixture of abstracted shapes provoking intuitive associations come together in cut-up scenes which seem to half tumbled straight out of a dream. It’s clear that what is shown is how things are experienced, not merely seen. Selectivity but especially deformation become key narrative elements. Shapes are released from function and roam freely.

Some things are irrevocably erased and replaced by new forms and impressions, but eventually everything has to make way for the process. The process determines the work. De Roeck is both witness and engine, but stays open to every change. This to her is the most honest attitude: maintaining a dialogue with the materials, but always in sync with nature. Nature is a constant theme throughout her work: plants, flowers, mountains, animals and some traces of human figures but above all the moon are recurrent themes. “… moons that keep coming back as a reflection of our constant changing mood, like the unstoppable spinning of the planet, the unstoppable spinning of everything…”

In De Roeck’s paintings and drawings everything floats in a striking amount of white. Everything communicates with each other but gets its own freedom in a 4-dimensional puzzle she uses to build her own slice of reality. However random the shapes and figures appear to be, the whole needs to make sense. It’s only then that the battle, or rather the dance, finds – at least on the canvas – it’s natural stopping point.

Lauren Wiggers, 2019.