What always attracted me in painting and image making is the way art “makes visible” things and ideas that are “not visible” as such in the simple visible world but which “appear” in the minds of the viewer.

It took me over twenty years to sort out the difference between “symbols” (a “convention” accepted among a group or a code system designed to communicate a secret meaning), and “metaphor” which by assembling things unusual, by irony and paradox, allows the individual mind to “discover” the meaning the painter intended to transmit.

Such an approach offers the joy of discovery and surprise, a deep human quality. Modern art started as a non-figurative form of symbolism till “contemporary” art brought many artists to put an axe into the very idea of poetical meaning.

In 1957, the CIA sponsored, under various covers and often without the artists even knowing about it, many “abstract” artists to promote a form of art that it considered coherent with its ideology of “free enterprise.”

So what inspires me is true human culture, be it Chinese painting of the Song dynasty, the Greco-Buddhist sculptures of Gandhara, the early Flemish masters such as Van Eyck or Matsys or the magnificent bronze heads of Ifé in current Nigeria.

Bridging the distances in space and time, religion and philosophy, stands the celebration of unique human capacities, that of compassion, empathy and love.

What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
When asked about that aspect, I always say: "I don’t pursue themes, they pursue me!"

My aim is to shock people by showing them that nothing is more “modern” and “revolutionary” than “classical” art, not understood as annoying academic formalism, but as a science of composition based on non-cynical, liberating ironical poetical metaphors, who are the key to all forms of art be it in the domain of the visual arts or music.

Art is always a “gift” from the artist to the viewers and the act of giving is an act of love. That is the message.

Born in 1957 in Antwerp, Belgium, Karel graduated from the Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels and trained in engraving at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, where he obtained a certificate of passage « with distinction. »

In France, as a member of the Fédération nationale de l’estampe, he confirmed his technical mastery at Atelier63 and continued to perfect his skills in the Paris workshop of Danish engraver Bo Halbirk.

Karel's parents worked in the port and the ship repair industry. Their adolescence, studies and careers were reduced to zero by the war period and the need to bring an income and feed their brothers, parents and family. So for their children, they wanted them to have the occasion to fully enjoy and explore the cultural dimensions.

His mother, who was prevented by the war to become an opera singer, got Karel into a music school. But at that time, the teaching methods, basically learning to read scores for two years before ever being allowed to sing, were so repugnant that I ran away from that. As an alternative, his mother sent Karel to a communal drawing school directed by a talented sculptor named Herman Cornelis. The bearded cigar-smoking giant would rip pages out of old books and stick them in Karel's hands saying “copy this!”

At age 12, Karel won his first art prize and his teacher convinced his mother “there was precious talent” in her son. With that advice, his mother sent him to Brussels to attend the Saint Luke Art School and study Plastic Arts. Some teachers were quite annoying but others got us into deep study of anatomy, examining Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer’s groundbreaking studies. Karel continued another two years at the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts of Brussels to study copper engraving and got graduated “with distinction.”

Karel then moved to Paris and worked as a journalist and editor of a non-commercial militant paper. But after some years, I found out art was really lacking in my life so I returned to it. First by producing copies of old masters painting on wooden oak panels with hand-made egg tempera, Venetian turpentine and various other ancient oil techniques he rediscovered with a schoolmate.

Since the people that ordered these painting took them home, at the end, the artist had nothing to put on show. Therefore, Karel returned to watercolors and etching. He also gave a three year course of drawing for some of his friends, mainly amateurs and beginners.

https://artkarel.com/

Aug 5 Karel Vereycken

Aug 6 Michael Kopplstätter

Aug 5 Mario Molins