Joris Van de Moortel
(Oostakker-Lourdes,
1983 )
In the unruly works of visual artist, performer and all-round musician Joris Van de Moortel, an anarchistic chaos prevails that seems a contemporary answer to Kurt Schwitters’s Dadaism. Not without humour or averse to poetic effect, Van de Moortel fuels an interplay between deconstruction and repurposing. His energetic performances and musical gigs often have a destructive outcome: Van de Moortel smashes his studio or instruments, showers his amplifier with boiling wax, sprays things with paint. Remnants of this aggression, as well as objects and sounds from his immediate surroundings, are incorporated as fragments into new assemblages and installations. His work also includes video, neon and print. From acts of iconoclasm, a kind of spatial Gesamtkunstwerk emerges that mixes high and low culture as well as past and present. With his Ur Gerausch Kammer Ensemble, Van de Moortel creates free compositions rooted in chaos and unpredictability.
