Johan Clarysse

Lives and works in Bruges (BE)

Johans’s paintings aim to ‘be enigmatic in a lucid way’. Themes such as identity formation, communication and non-communication, the elusiveness of human desires and motivations form a common thread in his work.
Clarysse finds painting an ideal medium for creating layered, hybrid images. During the painting process, the artist asks questions about the ambiguity of our human condition, about the status of the image and of painting as such. His paintings attract and confuse, they reveal and conceal, they question the obviousness and unambiguity of familiar images and at the same time reinforce them. This creates an intriguing oeuvre full of double meanings and references. His oeuvre is both playful and serious, both clear and ambiguous, emotionally restrained and intense.