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Since the Renaissance, painting has been considered as "a window on the world": the canvas was presented as an opening on a landscape, a seascape, a portrait. The situation changed in the 20th century with abstract painting, which offered the window the alternative of frontality. A work was no longer necessarily an opening to the outside but, strangely, to the inside: the artist faced a wall on which he projected, sometimes violently, his impulses. This reflection, which started in the 1940s, was synthesized in 1951 in the Parisian exhibition "Véhémences confrontées", which gathered for the first time European artists (Hartung, Mathieu, Fautrier, ...) and American artists (Pollock, Tobey, ...) directed by art critic Michel Tapié. Under the labels of abstract expressionism, informal art or tachism, the canvas appeared as an arena, a place of conflict between the artist and himself, his art, or society.
Antoni Tàpies has deeply invested the metaphor of the wall. Denis De Mot follows in his wake. It is not here the place of an impulsive projection. If we extend the image of the arena, the artist stands at the edge of the ring, at the foot of the stands, and places his hands against the surrounding wall. He would touch the texture, looking for cracks, dried blood and sweat stains, holes left by the bulls' horns.
If the work bears the traces of a passage, it is not the conflicting one of the artist, but the more insidious one of time. It takes very little for us to forget that a human hand is at the origin of these paintings, as they seem so natural.
The traces of time constitute the vocabulary of the painter: network of cracks, scratches, rusty prints cover a meticulous succession of strata. This is the technique developed by Denis De Mot. The artist superimposes on his PVC panel layers of gouache and acrylic, sometimes more than twenty, on which he sometimes returns to excavate them in the manner of an archaeologist, scraping this substrate to uncover one or another previous layer. In the end, the work brings back ancient states of existence, as if it had crossed the ages. In the words of the painter: "I build time".
Time: this is the key to this work which speaks of our memory of the past. No precise image is represented to dictate a particular feeling. Rather, the multiple traces, even the lines of paint that the artist places on his compositions, appear as guides in the meanders of our personal memory, like a mental topography. Here are summoned tenuous, sensory memories. Nothing precise, but diffuse feelings. By closing itself to the figuration, the work opens itself to the imaginary. In the arena whose walls Denis De Mot has drawn, it is the spectator who is at the center of the space, confronted with his memories. Far from the current primacy of the "brand new", Denis De Mot's painting, between wear and tear and cracks, awakens us to a poetic of the passing time.
Adrien Grimmeau, December 2007
Born in Belgium in 1956.
2023
Galerie DIDIER DEVILLEZ, Brussels, Belgium
2021
Exhibition for the Prix de la Fondation Gaston Bertrand, Brussels, Belgium
2019
Galerie DIDIER DEVILLEZ, Brussels, Belgium
2018
PIET COLAERT, Anvers, Belgium
2017
DE MUELENAERE & LEFEVERE Gallery, Oostduinkerke, Belgium
2016
Galerie DIDIER DEVILLEZ, Brussels, Belgium
Galerie MICHEL ALLARD, Brussels, Belgium
2015
DE MUELENAERE & LEFEVERE Gallery, Oostduinkerke, Belgium
2013
PIET COLAERT & Modern Shapes Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
2012
PIET COLAERT & Quest for Art, Brasschaat, Belgium
2011
Galerie DIDIER DEVILLEZ, , Brussels, Belgium
PIET COLAERT, Antwerp, Belgium
2010
Cabinet Artistique LIBRE CHOIX, Brussels, Belgium
2008
Galerie MARTINE EHMER / LIBRE COURS, Brussels, Belgium
Galerie OOBLIK, Lyon, France
2005
Galerie MARTINE EHMER / LIBRE COURS, Brussels, Belgium
2000
Galerie ZINZEN, Brussels, Belgium
2016
Galerie DIDIER DEVILLEZ, Brussels, Belgium
2014
Galerie MARTINE EHMER / LIBRE COURS, Brussels, Belgium
2007
Galerie Sans Nom, Brussels, Belgium
2005
Galerie MARTINE EHMER / LIBRE COURS, Brussels, Belgium
2004
L’AUTRE GALERIE, Brussels, Belgium
2002
Galerie ART PRESENT, Paris, France
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