The encounter with Joris’s work was immediate and natural: his eclectic and deeply installation-based practice struck us for the ability to build visual and sonic universes in which matter, sound and gesture live together in an instable yet surprisingly coherent balance. 

Joris Van de Moortel’s art originates from a strong contamination among languages: music – often performative – is not merely an accompaniment, but it is actually the conceptual source of his work. His installations develop as tridimensional scores, where rhythm, repetition and intensity become mediums of introspection and investigation into the human condition. In this process, a deep reflection on Northern European cultures emerges, on their imaginaries, myths, gods and the symbolic systems that cross them, adapted by the artist in a contemporary way, sometimes openly spiritual, sometimes ironically sacred. 

In Van de Moortel, creativity takes on the traits of an actual secular religiousness, in which the creative act becomes ritual, research and internal necessity.

The choice of presenting his work at the Fondazione Ghisla is also linked to a personal dimension: the artistic world Joris comes from is profoundly familiar to us. Brussels and Northern Europe have not only been a place of life for us for many years, but also a formative environment, one of encounters and fundamental discoveries. Finding, in this artist’s work, that same cultural tension and that same freedom of speech was the sparkle that ignited our interest. 

With La Tana del Matto we wish to offer the public an immersive, intense and non-reassuring experience, capable of opening new questions and new imaginaries. An invitation to enter, defenseless, into the space of artistic research as a space for listening, bewilderment and revelation.

Martine Ghisla, Pierino Ghisla