What distinguishes Johan Gelper’s work

 

 

What distinguishes Johan Gelper’s work is his playful method of tracing. He tracks, discovers, draws, and accentuates a movement that seems to connect the immaterial world with the reality of tangible objects. The mental world of ideas and thoughts, which attract and repel, engage and disengage, open and close, take on surprising forms in Gelper’s work.

 

These forms are created by careful exploration, observation and sensing of the environment. His play on proportions colours the game of acceptance and avoidance. Found objects are combined to create a new situation. Connections are added with purifying precision, the artist always respecting the random nature of playful elements. His witty take on human attempts to make sense of the world, his tireless exploration of mediums and techniques, gives a lighthearted appearance to the work. Johan Gelper’s sense of aesthetics, which enables him to expose the true nature of objects, is especially admirable.

 

Gelper’s design makes fragments of our thoughts perceptible in space. A space that directs our thoughts and actions: front is connected to back, above is set in opposition to below, depth and surface complement each other, speed gives perspective to standing still, and so on.

The beauty of his work is not static, but is reflected in the dynamically vibrant balance between what creates human beings and what shapes and directs them.

 

Lief Brijs 8/01/2016  -  translation ; Kathy Kayser