Olivier Goethals, GOSPEL, 2022-2025
The working method of the Ghent-based artist Olivier Goethals (b. 1980, Belgium) is spontaneous, continuous, and intuition-driven. His paintings and works on paper develop through rich, overlapping layers — a complex interplay of lines, surfaces, and subtle movements that playfully guide the eye from one gesture to the next, each stratum revealing something new upon closer observation. This layered approach evokes memory, consciousness, and the shifting boundaries between inner and outer worlds.
His works often emerge as fleeting dreamscapes: abstract natural forms tangled with architectural lines. Acrylic, ink, pencil, spray paint, and oil stick collide in soft transitions and abrupt interruptions, forming a visual language that hovers between the organic and the constructed, the remembered and the imagined. Excerpts of text — philosophical reflections or politically charged fragments — punctuate these surfaces like anchors or small ruptures, recalibrating meaning, rhythm, and tone.
Goethals frequently references memory, consciousness, nature, and everyday life — always with an uncanny slant, as if filtered through a dream or a parallel realm. His works suggest immersive, otherworldly universes in which art becomes a passage to transcend reality.
His works often emerge as fleeting dreamscapes: abstract natural forms tangled with architectural lines. Acrylic, ink, pencil, spray paint, and oil stick collide in soft transitions and abrupt interruptions, forming a visual language that hovers between the organic and the constructed, the remembered and the imagined. Excerpts of text — philosophical reflections or politically charged fragments — punctuate these surfaces like anchors or small ruptures, recalibrating meaning, rhythm, and tone.
Goethals frequently references memory, consciousness, nature, and everyday life — always with an uncanny slant, as if filtered through a dream or a parallel realm. His works suggest immersive, otherworldly universes in which art becomes a passage to transcend reality.