MASEREEL

For some time now, Julien Meert has been developing a versatile art practice in which painting, drawing and graphics come together, with excursions into moving images and his activities as a musician. Within this multifaceted body of work, he interweaves autobiographical elements with cultural references from the 1980s and 1990s, and combines diverse influences such as analogue materials, graffiti, film and arcade games. The result is a purified, layered visual language that is at once playful and intense: behind a clear use of colour and an apparently naïve formal language lie themes such as inner struggle, loneliness and existential malaise.

On the occasion of Hibernus #3, Meert realized a number of individual graphic works for the first time, in which an investigation unfolds into the (human) body and (mental) space. The works are populated by rudimentary, almost caricatural faces that are reminiscent of masks or aliens. They depict a multitude of diverse inner states, but at the same time refer to social interactions and the complexity of existing in the face of the other, which is always coloured by projection and uncertainty. In the “cosmic” series, sometimes with a black, sometimes a very light background, the focus shifts to isolation and an imaginary form of isolation. These works show both a tendency to withdraw and the frustration of the lack of real connection in a hyper-connected world. In this way, they touch on a broader sense of alienation and mental exhaustion, akin to what is today called ‘information fatigue’.

Meert’s method is intuitive and driven by urgency. Using unpredictable techniques, he translates a sense of mental vulnerability into images full of disruption, noise and fragmentation. His work thus gives shape to a shared, vulnerable experience of existence in an increasingly complex reality.

A number of these works are available in our bookshop.