Joris Van de Moortel

Joris Van de Moortel works on a multidisciplinary oeuvre that explores the boundaries of art forms and challenges conventions. His chaotic aesthetic and deep-rooted creative urge form a unique universe that opens a critical dialogue on the complex relationships between nature, culture, art, religion and contemporary society.
The studio and exhibition space function as a modern alchemist’s laboratory, a place in which imagination and reason merge, and a mine from which the artist extracts materials and ideas. Van de Moortel transforms them into mystical feelings and thoughts, resulting in artworks that guide us in a rapidly changing world.
The artist explores the intricate and layered relationships between past, present and future, and how they shape us as we navigate between life and death, history and progress, ruthlessness and hope. In ‘Hell on Earth’, S.M.A.K.’s main front gallery is transformed into a sacred, total installation. New oil paintings, watercolours, models, sculptures and tarot cards meet film, performance, sound and music in a setting that testifies to a profound search for a new myth and spirituality, a fresh paradigm to encompass reality between past and future.
‘Hell on Earth’ is not so much an observation of the surrounding chaos, but rather an invitation to reflection and action. Where are we? According to Van de Moortel, we are in the NUR, between the PUR and FUR. But where precisely is that? Accompany the artist on his pilgrimage, of which this exhibition is a stopover, as he urges us to recognise our responsibility for restoring balance to the environment. For this restoration, we must find and reclaim our soul, reconnect it with the soil, and plant our heart in the earth like a seed.
This exhibition is a call to shatter the apathy and ignorance that grips our society. It conjures an apocalyptic image that reflects our current times, but also marks a new beginning. One in which art is the ultimate vehicle for revealing the journey’s deeper meaning as a collection of imagined memories.