Working with canvas or paper marouflaged on wood, Didier Goessens' pictorial technique translates a vital momentum, the expression of the release of a potential inner energy. Paintings and drawings with frenetic, pared down and incisive graphics unite the fluidity and dynamism of their creation.
Immersion in the creative industry
Originally from Hennuyeres in Belgium, Didier Goessens now lives in France, just a few miles from Belgian Lorraine. Growing up in a family which brought him into early contact with the fast-moving world of academies wherein his parents taught art, he roamed these privileged spaces, gaining a head-start in the practice of engraving, sketching, sculpture and photography.
After training in psychopedagogy, his studies at the Institut Saint-Luc in Liège led him to the uncommon profession of fashion illustrator (for, amongst others, Marie Claire, Flair, Feeling, as well as in numerous collaborations with Olivier Strelli, Gérald Wathelet, the Cinquantenaire Museum, and the 1992 Universal Exhibition of Seville). He also works as a publicist, graphic designer, and interior designer, and teaches fashion illustration at La Cambre-Brussels and IFPME-Liège.
He focuses primarily on his work as a plastic artist, concentrating on series like his suite of bulls and centaurs, collections of floral compositions or variations on the theme of the couple.
At the Ecole des Maîtres, Goessens learnt diligence, notably studying graphics with subtle echoes of oriental calligraphy and wall art. As an artist, he has taken an unusual journey, dominated by a constant dedication to drawing, gradually leading him towards lyrical abstraction.
The body exalted, eternal curves
In the momentum of colour, punctuated with emphases, frenetically phrased series carry perspective, precise tone, and balanced forces. Didier Goessens works primarily with ink and diluted acrylic, experimenting with glazing effects on panels, marouflage calligraphy paper and canvas. Goose feather and Chinese brushes, West meets East, cave paintings and lyrical abstraction, murmur and mess, Cupids and succubi... a breeze floats through.
The emotion created simply remains. As though it was nonetheless possible to reconcile the timelessness of art as the search for beauty and truth, conceptualism and contemporaneity... Didier Goessens wields a soaring but confident, fluid line in a vast body of art with multiple subjects. His nudes are dynamic - the faces disappear to make room for the momentum of the body. Exhibiting parallels with Asian calligraphy, Didier Goessens uses ink to create his lines and bring the forms to life, simple lines that become silhouettes.
