But in my experience good times don't last very long.
Got the news; Apartment sold! Please move out as quick as possible! New owners, no manners. It became like a routine thing. Packing in, part I.
Getting kicked out was easy, finding a new place to live and work, wasn't. Packing in, part II.
Thru a friend I found a new studio. I couldn't live there though. No heating, no toilet, no water, but a big concrete space with the most stunning skylight.
It was the perfect studio.
In the meantime I had to crawl into a tiny one room apartment above a garage on the other side of town were in winter I was freezing my nuts off. But hey, at least I had the perfect studio.
And soon I was working again. Don't get me wrong, being kicked out a perfect apartment-studio wasn't funny, but the boost I always get from a new studio makes up for that. A new studio always has an influence on my work. The line technique ended right there when I decided to go for enamel paint again.
Just as I made sculptures with on my own designed toys, this time I based the new paintings on my graphic novels.
Starting up the painting "Free Cinema!" (enamel on canvas, 165 x 180 cm).
The difference with normal easel painting was that I had to put them on the floor because of the liquidity of the enamel paint. So I build my first “bridge”.
Although difficult at first, it became my preferred way of working until this present day, even when I switched from enamel to oil paint later.
“Looking at me looking back” still drying...
I had to wait like 24 hours before I could stand the finished painting up on the easel. As long as it was on the floor, there was no way of telling if the painting seceded.
My favorite out of that series was definitely "The Urinal" (enamel on canvas, 160 x 200 cm). It was a public toilet (at the Vooruit, Ghent) of an original early 20th century design that I had to go many times. So I was really pissed when they destroyed it in a so-called restoration. Being progressive does not exclude stupidity, obviously. That's why I made that painting.
"Free Cinema" (enamel on canvas, 165 x 180 cm).
That year, probably because of the new studio, I did a lot of projects and installations…
Like for instance “Chasing Clouds” (acrylic & oil on artificial fur, wood, electric engine, 70 x 70 x 200 cm).
"Carousel" (light rope, steel & electric engine, 120 x 120 x 350 cm) was an installation I made for a play.
At a video group show in Brussels, I installed three video installations, projections on artificial fur sculptures; a mattress, a dress and a sofa. I had discovered that when I made the videos blurry, projecting them on fur made them sort of sharp again. Each piece was accompanied with music from Susumu Yokota.
One of the installations was called “Evicted”. A video of a crying woman projected on a mattress with a white artificial fur cover.
Poster design for the play "Maria eeuwigdurende bijstand”, written and directed by Arne Sierens.
Set designs for "Maria eeuwigdurende bijstand".
This play was about the very unstable relationship between two men and a woman, so this time I came up with the idea to symbolize that by using an ice rink. Very unstable indeed.