Yves Velter – translations Martin DesloovereYves Velter lives and works in Ostend, Belgium. An awareness of displacement and alienation constitutes the basis for his work, in which an interest in human (and humane) values comes to the fore. The muted characters in his work are based on existing people who have been made unrecognizable by making them abstract to a certain extent. They are placed in situations in which they create an opening in reality, thus enabling them to break through the impossibility of showing emotions. The images show the contrast between representation and abstraction. It is an aspect that works on several levels: the elusiveness of emotions, sensuality, fears, desires, individuality… In contrast to science, art is a domain where unconventional reasoning remains a possibility. The artist immerses himself in the world of a woman who is caught up in a closed-off logic of writing letters in a code all of her own. He considers these intimate scripts to provide a parallel with the world of the arts, where an artist also creates codes in order to translate his own world of thoughts. In the eyes, “the mirrors of the soul”, of his figures we can see small pieces of the aforementioned letters. Other objects and materials from several origins that carry a comparable tension within them (red dots, soil from his parents’ garden, cardboard, clothing…) are also being used as ingredients in his works. In a world of his own he investigates and reorders the experiences, objects and metaphors which possess this ‘tension’. With connection to this, the artists speaks of making ‘corrections of ratio’ which enable him to use his very own code of images in order to give expression to the unanswerable. Presence, an indoor study. This work is giving the suggestion of shape to a “de-bodied” body. On the outside, shape can be recognized, while on the inside we can see volume, yet it still is a sculpture without skin. It is possible to look and feel right through it. It is an image of somebody we cannot get to. This ethereal quality of this image is reinforced by the illusion that the sculpture is floating within the space where it has been placed. In order to visualize subjects that have no visual qualities, I investigate the possibilities of finding an alternative that has an equal value. One such possibility consists in redefining, reshaping the subject into a visual metaphor. Since 1995 I have been concentrating in my work on creating a visual language consisting of different materials, objects and symbolic representations that are all part of a visual code. Earth from my parents’ garden, cardboard, clothing, coded letters, 80-year-old colour pigments, etc...: all of these elements carry a story and have the quality of becoming metaphors.
In 1996 a new element was introduced as a metaphor for fear and longing: these feelings are represented by clusters of little red dots. The nature of this representation however makes it difficult to create a three-dimensional appearance; a hologram could provide a technical solution, but this technology is too specialised and too expensive, and above all the poetic aspect would lose much of its potential. In 2004 I undertook some research into the possibilities of creating volume with thin wire and metal balls. I found that, when lots of wires are placed close to one another in a grate-like structure and then get little metal balls attached to them, it became possible to create clusters “floating” in space. Shortly afterwards I succeeded in designing a human figure (the most archaic figure) with this technique. A few months later I acquired the necessary technical knowledge and skill to keep the 2,5m high sculpture stable. The first study was ready. Since May 2006 this experimental sculpture is permanently on display in ‘Provinciehuis Boeverbos’, Bruges (Belgium). Images without background. Paintings and sculptures by Yves Velter.
OKV – Openbaar Kunstbezit in Vlaanderen – nr. 6 – December 2007- January 2008 – Text: Daan Rau
By thinking, one sometimes finds things one was not looking for. Serendipity, that is called, and this was also the title of the first special exhibition presenting a survey of the work of Yves Velter in 1997. “I’m not exactly looking for answers, but for alternatives for answers”, the artist says.
Warm works that have something to say You must certainly know someone like this: one of those boys – it can also be a girl – who submits the toys brought by Santa Claus to intense scrutiny. Preferably the child makes use of all sorts of useful materials in order to penetrate into the deepest bowels of the object under investigation. And in case the physical capacities would be missing, then there are still the questions that can be asked and that could – do admit it – embarrass you or actually pull the switch of your imagination too. Yves Velter is such a boy, by now a grown-up man with questions. He loves to philosophize, to investigate, to turn things over in his mind. He has a tendency to take some distance from the things that occupy him by putting them in a more general context. On the other hand he feels strongly drawn to these things; they touch him. Yves Velter is actually quite an emotional guy, although one would not always admit this when looking at his work for the first time. It was at the beginning of the 1990s that this artist made himself known for the first time with a number of paintings that were rather unusual for these years when the Neue Wilden and the Tranavanguardia were still shimmering through in the art scene. He presented paintings that showed machine parts, belts and cables, air tubes, caps and screws, technical drawings. Velter presented these in a cool, metal frame and sometimes actual belts or other real elements were incorporated. Nevertheless these were warm works with a strong poetic power of expression, works that had something to say about us and about our times. And this was noticed and honoured with awards and exhibitions. Free forms
All those paintings were the result of thinking, of pondering over things that happen, to oneself or to other people. By such thinking one sometimes finds things one was not looking for. A word has been coined for this: serendipity. This also was the title of the first special exhibition giving a survey of his work in 1997 in the ‘Museum voor Schone Kunsten’ (Museum of Fine Arts) in Ostend, which has disappeared since. At this point already it was clear that Velter had left the technical-mechanical works behind him by now, in favour of works in which – I am quoting Hugo Brutin – “form and thought, illusion and reality, and free form exuberantly complement and challenge each other.” That exhibition also showed sculptures, the so-called ‘free forms’. These find their origin in the question whether it was possible to represent pure form. What is form, actually? Does form have a meaning? It is questions like these that preoccupy the artist and to which he tries to find answers. His research showed that pure form is impossible, that there is always a cause for a form. Now you can say: he could have known that before! And of course you are right, but then again you are not: he could never have known it in the way that he knows now and that he lets us experience through his work. Man undressed I have also already mentioned emotions with regard to Yves Velter. I want to refer here to a series of works he realized with the material inheritance of a family member who passed away. The woman concerned was mentally disturbed in one way or another and lived in a world completely of her own. This has always greatly intrigued Yves and he has attempted in many ways to penetrate into this closed-off universe, completely alien to him. As a result he realized a number of installations for which he used the furniture of the woman, ‘dressing it up’ with her clothes. Chairs, tables, cupboards, TV, all kinds of daily objects were covered with flower-patterned dresses and women’s suits. The installations had a highly cuddly character and doubtlessly brought him closer to his family member than he had ever been before. Dozens of letters that she wrote and that were found among her inheritance are also very important for the work of the artist. These were letters that were difficult or impossible to understand for a “normal” person. They are drawn up in a sort of coded language and are addressed to people with a certain power. By writing the letters the woman dealt with her fears, she kept herself going in the world that seemed hostile and threatening to her. All things considered, this is not all that strange after all: the use of imploring formulae is still current. Later paintings, which were presented in various exhibitions, show us human figures. They are very toned down, stripped of every redundant element. They have a strange aura. That is mainly due to the eyes, the eyes that are missing and have been replaced by fragments from the letters of the previously mentioned lady. Are the eyes not, after all, the mirrors of the soul? The human figure had already popped up before in the work of the artist, albeit in sculptural form. In most of these cases we are dealing with a man’s body, schematically represented. One of those almost life-size sculptures is completely covered with fragments from the letters in question; the human being as a written page. It is somewhat surprising to see, but it is striking and meaningful to someone who is prepared to look beyond the surface. We can of course also consider that male figure as a sort of a self-portrait. Earlier on he had already made several multiples that were related to the (his) body. Tongues, ears, moving or hinged elements were among such inventive and sometimes slightly oppressing creations. The small sculpture of the man with his head in the clouds is characteristic for this artist too. The man with his head in the clouds is not really a dreamer; it is a thinker who sees through the clouds. Red dots Yves Velter himself says: “The thread through my work is my constant fascination for themes on which I cannot get a grip. Not through science either. That is precisely why visual art is a suitable means for investigation here. I am not directly looking for answers, but for alternatives for answers, and I do that by means of some kind of image research. The images (note from the author: the paintings are meant here) that I make, are quite often isolated from the context, there is no background. The most crucial element in the story, the most essential, is what is left.” What inspires him are photographs, situations, incidents. In this way the photograph of the first paying astronaut in the newspaper lead to a work being made. That man does not get there just like that, it is the crystallization of a whole evolution and that is exactly what immensely interests the artist. Social themes and derailments touch him. The scandal about the fertility specialist Dr. Cecil Jacobson, who inseminated his patients without their knowledge with his own sperm, caused a small wave of births of rather chubby children with sight problems. It led to a large painting of a by now grown up sprig of Jacobson’s creativity.
In Velter’s work there is still another, not unimportant detail that has been present since quite a while: the red spots or the little red balls. These too play their part in the visual alphabet used by the artist. They refer to elements, fears and desires, that fascinate him and on which he cannot get a grip. In that way they become workable, malleable; they can be controlled. They frequently appear in the most recent paintings. They add to a certain tension and drama, sometimes they rather look like spots of blood. Taking these red dots as a starting point, Velter has designed a sculpture, commissioned by the Province of West-Flanders. It is an ephemeral sculpture that is actually only made up of wire and hundreds of tiny red balls hung within a frame; together they form a human figure. The work is erected in the park around the Provincial Administrative Centre ‘Boeverbos’ in Bruges (St.-Andries). It is shown in a glass display case and is judiciously lit at night. It works like an apparition. It is an impressive image, you can hardly get a hold over it and its form is constantly changing as you walk around it. It causes you to start musing on man, on yourself, on transitoriness; it is like a very contemporary vanitas and it also reminds one of the images we known from science-fiction series. “Beam me up, Scotty”, you say, jokingly, but it really does stay with you. Certainly worth a detour. First and foremost, to make art is to search …
ISEL nr. 26 – September-October 2008 – Text: Steven Verschoore
The strongly penetrating paintings and the mysterious floating creatures of Yves Velter leave few people – whether devotee or layman – untouched. This is because they are the artistic exteriorisation of human introspection, of an alternative for the lack of answers to the existential questions, of displacement and estrangement also. However uncomfortable his creations may be at first sight, those who accept the codes of the artist and familiarise themselves with his essential imagery, end up in an unparalleled universe, a universe that relentlessly dissects reality, without necessarily having to explain it.
Infinite serendipity
After experimenting for four years with a technologically inspired style of drawing, your work slowly but clearly turned towards a totally different visual language and more human themes. Why that change?
Because as an autodidact I have not received an academic training and have never been taught about the essential fundamentals of an image, such as colour, material and form, I have always had to rely on research and far-reaching personal experiments.
Making technical drawings supplied me with an instrument that enabled me to work with the fundamentals of an image, even though this subject of study was not in the first place meant for that. In spite of the mathematical language, I nevertheless told an aesthetic, harmonious and poetic story. Still – despite good contacts in the industry, the fact that technical drawing allowed me to go in an endless number of directions and a constant realisation that the possibilities of variation were enormous – I got to a stage of saturation, I encountered a whole series of limitations after a few years and I slowly switched to a more organic language. In that sense my exhibition Serendipity in 1997 meant the end of a period but also the discovery of a clear formal running thread and an intrinsic backbone. My research into the basic formal elements turned out to be behind me and was replaced by an investigation more related to content.
Serendipity??
Serendipity is a broad concept, but refers first of all to the phenomenon that, while you are searching for something, you can discover, due to uncontrollable circumstances, something much more interesting. The scientific discovery of penicillin, for example. The British physician-biologist Alexander Fleming literally got this medicine out of the dustbin. The culture in question was found on a little laboratory plate that had been disposed of. Serendipity is also constantly present in our everyday life, but we have no grip on it. The fact that sometimes a conscious source for an answer does not exist, is particularly thrilling and indirectly leads to a research being actually endless. The serendipity of what is happening is a carte blanche to keep on going.
In the past as well as now the searching itself is the central motivation for your creative activities. How do you deal with the answers?
First and foremost, to make art is to search. Let me compare the creative process with a journey for a moment. Let us suppose that a world traveller can reach his destination without moving each time. What is the value of the concept of travelling then? I travel in order to travel, not in order to arrive at my destination as quickly as possible. I experience every quest as a phenomenon, and as I became increasingly conscious of this phenomenon, the searching in itself became ever more important and demanded a place at the centre. Actually I am convinced that answers lean towards the essence of science, rather than that they would be able to acquire artistic meaning. I see art above all else as an alternative for science and belief because art does not require proof or clear answers. Answers close off. They constitute an end point. That is why I love to harbour strong assumptions, at the most. Strong assumptions leave space for new questions, for further searching … Usually I am already very pleased when I understand the building stones of the presentation of a question, as the building stones of questions enable me to tackle related questions and to be amazed again, over and over.
Enigmatic alternative
As a child you were particularly amazed by people who lived in the television box. According to your own account your curiosity about how such a thing was possible only ended when you opened up a television set. Did the act of opening it up calm your inner restlessness?
Yes, the screen was a window and behind that window people were living. The television fascinated me immensely: how was it possible that there was life in that little box? I vividly remember the day that I was allowed by my father to take a television set apart. Seeing the electronics answered my curiosity and calmed me. Suddenly my questions disappeared, without me actually receiving a real, intrinsic answer. Seeing the inside felt particularly pleasant because my fears were eliminated.
The act of opening up the set presented an enigmatic alternative for the real answers to my questions: a metaphor for a primary, but at that moment essential and particularly powerful understanding.
In 1998 these themes constituted the basis for my exhibition Rust (Serenity) and they directly refer to the central question that I have been asking myself for years: when I want to answer a question, am I then actually looking for those intrinsic answers, or is the finding of the answers as such, the fact that my question gets answered as an objective result, the motive behind my searching? A long time ago already I discovered that finding an answer as an objective fact brings me much more peace than the actual ‘content’ of the answers. As a matter of fact we experience this continuously in our daily lives. When your GP prescribes some medicine, the fact of him prescribing you some pills can bring you more peace than when he would explain the chemical composition of those pills. In this case trust constitutes the means of experiencing serenity, without you knowing the composition of the pills.
A large part of the world’s population avoids existential questions by being deeply religious or by freebooting through life. You frequently emphasize the unanswered questions of life. Do you make it hard on yourself?
That I incorporate the unanswered questions of life in my creations is a matter of free choice. There are no obligations. But I do want to admit that I usually experience a strong urge to conjure up “the big why”. This phenomenon in combination with a very advanced humanism constitutes the central motive to be creative with the unconstrained imagery I have created. And this is not a form of therapy, but a celebration. I actually want to distance myself specifically from the therapeutic aspect. I do not make art in order to stay healthy. Nonetheless my creativity does have a common ground with the spiritual and the aspect of experience is important.
Within this context a review on your website mentions so-called rational corrections: via your own imagery you give shape to the unanswerable.
My reasonings in face of every question are rational corrections, for they are usually not based on science and always unconventional. Moreover I try to involve the viewer strongly, because dialogue guarantees always new questions and in this way every question is just a cog within the bigger whole. That is also how I justify for myself that I intentionally fail in an impossible task.
Fear and desire
The characters in your recent paintings look still and quiet, as it were. In that sense your paintings always look like snapshots in time of serenity and introspection.
I love to depict people who seem to accept their pose. My characters are always at peace with themselves, with the situation they find themselves in or with the activity they are carrying out. Even when my wrestlers are depicted wrestling (‘De klatch’ – ‘The Complaint’), they seem to embrace each other into infinity. They are one and find peace in that oneness, even though they are fighting.
Your floating figures made of wire and little balls like the figure in ‘Presence’ merely show a suggestion of a human form. Why?
Since a good length of time I have been experimenting with little red dots and balls. They symbolize fear and desire. In the meantime they have even become a considerable constant in my work. Most artists would choose an expressive way to portray the emotions involved. Personally I have made it easy on myself and I have chosen a clear symbol. Look, the things I represent in my work usually do not make you cheerful. My work contains a lot of pain, which often looks awkward because of the comforting nature. Yet I do enjoy portraying negative emotions such as loneliness and sorrow in an aesthetic way. And that is precisely why a high degree of uneasiness can be found in my work. I let the viewer experience well-known themes such as fear and desire on another level than where they would place them, more specifically in their origins. I find this tension to be particularly fascinating. In Presence fear and desire, precisely those emotions that nobody really likes to show, form the central building stones. The suggestion of the human figure has no spine or skin, no intrinsic solidity and no protecting shield. You can literally put your hand into it, an act which feels exceptionally poetic. However fragile the silhouette may seem, the image is strong, because it derives its existence precisely from the weakness it represents for the viewer.
Why did you baptise a similar work 'Cecil Jacobson'? Cecil Jacobson is generally known as the ‘sperminator’...
As an American fertility doctor Cecil Jacobson was a pioneer in the field of artificial insemination. A particularly successful man until it became known that he systematically replaced the sperm of donors by his own sperm. In other words he was spreading his own genes and believed himself somewhat to be God, which led to heated ethical discussions in the United States. Most fascinating! I have portrayed him with his fears and desires. Not that I wanted to glorify the man. I am just impressed by his irresponsible antics. Do you know the phenomenon of the watchers' traffic-jam, when people abandon all sense just in order to be able to see what has happened? My work Cecil Jacobson originated as it were in the watchers' traffic-jam caused by this story at a given moment.
The Language of Aunt Trees
(Trees = Flemish form of the name 'Theresa')
The eyes of the often tormented characters that inhabit your paintings, are filled up with fragments of written text? Where do those fragments come from?
They come from letters written by my autistic aunt Trees. By including her texts in the eyes of my characters I replace the mirror of the soul, which the eyes essentially are, by the coded language which only she understood. I often ask myself: how well do I know somebody? Every person's code of behaviour and tolerance change when he or she is together with someone else. Is my friend the same person when he is in the company of somebody else, and if that is not the case, is that person in his or her other appearance then still my friend? We do not know each personal characteristic of the people with whom we live, whom we love and like. Just analyse how different your own personality can be, depending on the people who surround you at a given moment. In order to illustrate that, I have pasted fragments of text from my aunt's letters into the eyes of my characters.
Why did your autistic aunt constitute such an important source of inspiration?
Because she left me a fantastic metaphor with her letters. She was mentally and socially isolated, already as a child she was put away in a small back room – that is the way it often was in earlier times – and she communicated only about primary things, such as hunger, cold... A conversation was hardly possible and yet she wrote piles of letters. I discovered those when her mother passed away and my aunt had to move to a special home. From the letters it was evident that she had a particularly active mind and that she had developed a written language of her own so as to order her thoughts.
Later I talked about it with a psychoanalyst and he pointed out to me that the words were correct but that the sentences were unreadable. She invariably addressed her letters to figures of authority such as the police commissioner, the king and the pope: in short, people who in her way of thinking were capable of helping her. Afterwards I also learned that she wrote particularly fluently and that she hardly thought about the words she was writing down. Her writings were her language!
A stream of consciousness?
Exactly! How is it possible that someone who hardly receives any stimulation from the outside world nevertheless develops her own language? Extraordinary! Artists too develop their own language. I have incorporated hers into mine. And in this way the inclusion of her texts in my work becomes an ode to her isolated existence and we have become partners in crime. For my exhibition Private Language in 2001I have actually wrapped up her old pieces of furniture in her clothing. This act too was heavily loaded. By dressing up her television set, her cupboards and her chair with her own clothes, I breathed new life into her existence. However strange the result may have been, the act was felt to be very lovely by a lot of viewers.
"Aan zee kan het waaien" - Annelies Vantyghem The works of Yves Velter are strung together by a thematic thread. Existential questions and the psychological issues involved constitute the central content of his artistic production. Velter considers it a challenge to render visible those aspects of reality that are not visual but seep through into reality nonetheless. With “Presence” he has in his own way given shape to immaterial and invisible psychological components of man. His floating sculpture “Presence” (2006) suggests a human shape. Strangely enough it looks more like a shadow than a human being of flesh and blood. The sculpture allows us to look right through it, yet it is present. It has no skin (shield) and lacks a spine (sturdiness). The figure defies us in all its psychological nudity. It has been skinned and grants us a look underneath. The little red balls that constitute the sculpture are used by Velter as a metaphor for two elementary human feelings: fear and desire. By way of protecting ourselves, we have a tendency to hide precisely these feelings from others, or sometimes even more: to deny them to ourselves. They are under a taboo and being open about them makes us vulnerable. The characters in black, stylized outfits who inhabit Velter’s paintings, strongly contrast with the white vacuum that surrounds them. Their mouths are missing and their eyes have been reduced to blind spots: empty eye cavities or spectacles with pieces of text glued to the glasses. Their incapacity to talk and to see makes them socially handicapped. After all, communication at its most basic level consists of sending and receiving, and it’s precisely these skills that have been physically taken from them. Trapped in their autistic state they only succeed in presenting us with an unintelligible amoeba of emotions or in letting fears and desires bleed out through a cut in their arm.The themes that Velter reflects upon are closely linked to a fact from his family context. The fragments of text that appear in his artwork are taken from letters written by an autistic aunt. The breakdown in communication she experienced pushed her into creating a world of her own by way of writing letters. They are written in a personal code which seems incoherent and illogical to other people but which offered her the possibility to communicate in her own way. The hermetic character of the letters is being used by Velter as a metaphor for the inaccessible; on top of that, it provides a parallel to the world of the arts, where artists also create their own language in order to give shape to their vision of the world.
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