Johan Van Mullem Movements of the Soul

Johan Van Mullem

Les Mouvements de L’Âme

Movements of the Soul

Johan Van Mullem

Les Mouvements de L’Âme

Movements of the Soul

Foreword

Hus Gallery and Andipa Gallery are delighted to announce the first major solo exhibition of works by Johan Van Mullem. The exhibition will showcase a selection of works from the ongoing series Movements of the Soul, which the artist has spent the past six years exploring and developing.

Johan Van Mullem is a contemporary artist who creates works that blur the line between the figurative and the surreal. His dream-like paintings occasionally bear traces of Van Mullem’s own physicality, though more often than not his characters are conjured from his imagination without any explanation. Typified by strong, subversive and imaginative elements as well as a bold handling of paint, the current series Movements of the Soul, is an impressively sincere body of work that engulfs the viewer with its haunting power.

Born in Isiro in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Flemish parents, Johan Van Mullem moved frequently whilst growing up due to his father’s profession as a diplomat. As a result, Van Mullem spent seven years living in Tunisia, a country which deeply impacted him:

I have been forever torn between my Flemish roots and that marvelous Mediterranean culture. No other country has had such an impact on me. It was there that I began to draw, to fill my notebooks, and I have never stopped.

However,Van Mullem’s strong personal connection with his art meant that he was reluctant to exhibit his works publicly, and as a result he took to disappearing for long stretches of time to draw in secret. Subsequently, he chose a career as an architect, whilst continuing to express himself artistically in private.

For many years, I lived with that unease…I pretended, I played a role that was not me. It was a very difficult time, perhaps even dramatic, but in my heart I never lost hope, never gave up. I always thought that death was the ultimate freedom before realizing that it solved nothing. I was condemned to live. Thankfully, I was finally able to break the cycle. Today, I am a new man, a sort of rebirth. My work has evolved and the result of that evolution is in my studio. I now have the energy to finally become what I have always been at my core.

Van Mullem’s history is crucial to his work, as there is a suggestion of the incarnated presence of the artist in his creations, his paintings bear the trace of his own physicality and relationship to the materials. Each stroke reasserts this synergy between body and work, as Van Mullem’ marks his paintings with such traces of himself – almost signatures.

Les Mouvements de L’Âme Movements of the Soul About the Series

Movements of the Soul focuses on ideas of vision and perception, with works in varying mediums. In the works Van Mullem investigates the complex relationship between the theoretical and the physical, specifically the visual exploration of the mind as a captive of the body.

Johan Van Mullem’s oeuvre is characterized almost entirely by portraiture. His works feature surreal depictions of the subject’s innate desires and feelings rather than portraying a physical similitude, aiding each viewer to interpret the figures in accordance to their own memories or dreams. These works are therefore not only visual representations of the artist’s nostalgic desires and childhood apparitions, but also those of the viewer. Typified by strong subversive and imaginative elements as well as a bold handling of paint, the works in this exhibition beautifully illustrate Van Mullem’s interest in artistic technique and individual emotion above all else.

Van Mullem’s works are characterized by three key elements that work together to assert a synergy between body and work. The first is the common thread of richly coloured ink in his painted works, the second is Van Mullem’s ability to ignore physical boundaries of the edge of the board so that we are left chasing his brush far beyond the end of frame, and the third is the haunting familiarity found in the sunken eyes and sad mouths of his subjects, which play on the visual trickery of photographic after images. These elements, combined with Van Mullem’s decision to leave all of his works untitled firmly establishes an element of the self-generative, as Van Mullem’s practice defines its own parameters and subjectivity, that seems to indicate the possibility of endlessness, as though the surfaces on which the works exist could continue to unscroll ad infinitum.

Movements of the Soul is a series which describes Van Mullem’s artistic vision on the most fundamental level, and in fact led him to exhibit his work publicly for the first time. This exhibition will display a selection of works from the series in mediums ranging from ink, pen, and pencil. Van Mullem’s work is astonishingly honest, and is clearly a testament of his rather tumultuous artistic and personal growth.

SANS TITRE

Ink on board, 120cm x 120cm, 2012, £17,000.00 incl vat

Cat: 011219

SANS TITRE

Ink on board, 120cm x 120cm, 2012, £12,500.00 incl vat

Cat: 011203

SANS TITRE

Ink on board, 120cm x 120cm, 2012

£12,500.00 incl vat

Cat: 011204

SANS TITRE

Ink on board (diptych), 180cm x 140cm (each panel), 2011

£38,000.00 incl vat

Cat: 011103

SANS TITRE a - f

Pen on paper, 17.3cm x 12.7cm each, 2011

Set: £2,800.00 incl vat

a.Cat: D011146

b.Cat: D011147

c.Cat: D011148

d.Cat: D011149

e.Cat: D011150

f.Cat: D011151

a.b.c.

d.e.f.

Ink on board, 180cm x 140cm, 2012, £22,000.00 incl vat

011205

SANS TITRE Cat:

SANS TITRE

Ink on board (diptych), 200cm x 140cm (each panel), 2012

SOLD Cat: 011216

SANS TITRE

Ink on board, 180cm x 140cm, 2012, £28.000.00 incl vat

Cat: 011228

SANS TITRE

Ink on board (diptych), 180cm x 140cm (each panel), 2012

£38,000.00 incl vat

Cat: 011227

SANS TITRE

Ink on board (triptych), 140cm x 100cm (each panel), 2012

£36,000.00 incl vat

Cat: 011232

SANS TITRE

Ink on board, 160cm x 140cm, 2012

£24,000.00 incl vat

Cat: A011217

SANS TITRE

Ink on board, 100cm x 100cm, 2012

£11,500.00 incl vat

Cat: 011223

SANS TITRE

Ink on board, 100cm x 100cm, 2012

£11,500.00 incl vat

Cat: A011245

Ink on board, 180cm x 140cm, 2012

£28,000.00

Cat: 011242

SANS TITRE

SANS TITRE

Ink on board, 140cm x 100cm, 2012

£22,000.00 incl vat

Cat: A011281

SANS TITRE Pencil on Paper, 65cm x 50.3cm, 2011 £2,500.00 incl vat Cat: D011126 SANS TITRE Pencil on Paper 50cm x 65cm, 2011 £2,500.00 incl vat Cat: D011131

SANS TITRE Pencil on Paper, 64cm x 76.5cm, 2011 £2,500.00 incl vat Cat: D011134 SANS TITRE Pencil on Paper 76.5cm x 64cm, 2011, £2,500.00 incl vat Cat: D011136

SANS TITRE