Johan VAN MULLEM

Johan VAN MULLEM (1959)

Born in 1959 in Congo, Johan Van Mullem lives and works in Belgium.

Since his youth, Johan Van Mullem has been searching for the beauty that he recognised in the experience engraved on faces and hands.

Since then, the face has remained the main subject of his work, but over time he reverses the imprint of the face on his own face, while his subjects seem to grow younger, disappearing or being born in a halo of light, offering the eye an escape into the world of emotion.

A spontaneous, unreflected, authentic expression to fulfil his vocation, to become himself.

The self-taught mastery of the specific and unique technicality of his work, which is only executed in intaglio ink (an extension of his experience as an engraver), gives his work an additional depth.
The superimposition and erasure of the many smooth layers of diluted inks further accentuates this feeling of unspeakable presence on the canvas.

Johan Van Mullem lets it happen, without knowing. He works on his paintings and never takes them back.
Some of them are erased in places, details are elided here and highlighted there.
Sometimes the whole seems to emerge from the support like an apparition.

His painting is totally intuitive; it rises from the collective subconscious memory into the light of consciousness.
This painting process is done through multiple layers. Each layer is then erased to give life to a new layer which in turn disappears..... And so it goes on until the painter reaches the last layer that exists for him as a matter of course.

This last phase keeps the unconscious traces of all the previous ones. In the same way that every living being keeps traces of the different stages it goes through.

Johan's work is exhibited internationally and can be found in many important collections.