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Text by Yasmin Van 'tveld

Octpber 2023 - With Amazing Grace - Settantotto Art Gallery, Ghent

"With amazing grace."

With With Amazing Grace, Bert De Geyter presents vigorous flower drawings with explosive lines that connect endless life cycles with an invitation to embrace lightness. For the artist, life is but an unguided eruption of energy that eventually wanes again. A flower blooms, withers, and blooms once more. How we navigate this constant ebb and flow of vitality plays a role in how light we can be. His Japanese chrysanthemums serve as an exercise in observation and letting go, as we place trinkets of fear in a glass display cabinet. The pigmented haze within De Geyter’s drawings allows a sombre current to wash over the surface. Death, loss, dormant dreams, doubts – uncomfortable and threatening elements that often slip through our grasp – are met with tenderness and enveloped in hope and trust.

Without imposing his own directives, De Geyter searches for the essence of the flower. Time holds no sway here. There are no references to concrete moments that we can use to untangle what we struggle to comprehend. This sense of time defies conventional linearity. Much like endless anemones, the chrysanthemum petals dance towards the unbridled nature of life. In this regard, words find their place as emotional totems that emerge, vanish, and challenge. The artist constructs inviting abodes from letters, offering a gateway to the radical acceptance of what lies beyond our control. The flowers burgeon and fade away regardless.

The title piece With Amazing Grace (2021) speaks to us in layers. Atop the words “THE RAIN, THE RAIN, THE RAIN WALKS DOWN, WALKS DOWN, THE RAIN WALKS DOWN, WITH AMAZING GRAZE”, there are staggered white letters that read “WITH AMAZING GRACE”. This work draws its inspiration from the dry, scorching summer of 2021, during which Flanders longed for water, while the other side of the country was flooded by a devastating deluge. The dual nature of water, both a source of healing and destruction, is encapsulated in this reflection on climate change; grateful for the much-needed rain, without forgetting that this same rain has brought about many tragedies.

The smaller pieces in the series My Soul Like Water (2023-present) are the result of wet charcoal on wet paper, a technique that makes it challenging to direct the black pigment. The sodden follows its own course, and fluidity is connected to the artist’s core, where control is let go of. Throughout these misty images, words serve to encourage, reflect, and provide solace. The pursuit of capturing the essence of life remains continuous. In the quest for the universal, colour is intentionally omitted, and a form language rooted in basic patterns is intuitively relied upon. Within De Geyter’s cyclical concept of time, there are living spaces for the repetition of motifs that convey the essence of acceptance.

It all comes together in The Colours Are as Bright as Always (2023), where words arch like a rainbow. Like a multi-layered temple of light, this semicircle anticipates the arrival of rain as well. De Geyter's arches are devoid of colour, yet the seven shades don't seem necessary to recognise their form. It compels us to reevaluate the way we perceive the world. The rainbow serves as a bridge, inviting us to approach vulnerability with an open heart. Discomfort that has been acknowledged and embraced becomes more tangible. It’s soothing, takes away tension. Just like we can be certain that the energy of flowers will persist, we can also be assured that the colours will remain as bright as ever.

Text by Yasmin Van 'tveld

August 2023 - Only The Wind - Kapel Rozenkrans, Oostduinkerke

"Radical acceptance."

Like a black pigmented lighthouse, Bert De Geyter's work sheds light on what we’d rather leave unsaid. The artist expresses how he replaced his fear of impermanence and uncertainty with a fundamental acceptance of what is vulnerable. With his drawings and installations, he builds visual rooms where we are invited to get undressed and allow discomfort to enter, lest we end up on the rocks. As long as you don't dare to touch the bruises, you will continue to falter like a stuttering neon tube. This balanced message hides a sensitivity that is open to being affected by the vulnerability of others. Pain is welcomed, as long as sincerity resides there too.

The different layers of De Geyter’s images reveal a sense of humour and poetry that is highlighted by the contrasts between light and especially dark. Traces of his previous acts are still visible. Words as images have crept in intuitively. Regardless of their inherent meaning, they show up like signs in a space where they shelter a peek into the artist’s world. The letters are thin pillars that support a sense of security in a delicate city. Phrases like “Catch a dream let it go” and “Release Reveal Break Through” emerge from behind dark colours, and tell us to let go in order to allow growth. We prefer to cherish our dreams as close to us as we can, but De Geyter believes that we should really look them in the eye before eventually letting go to see them fledge.

The neon installation You (2022) reveals the complexity standing face to face with loss. “I like to fuck it up”, “you”, “I like you to fuck it up”, “I like it to fuck you up”, “I like you” portray the rollercoaster of shifting emotions when life as you know it is pulled from underneath your feet – though more like an elusively gliding glacier than a sudden earthquake. Radical acceptance of what (can’t) (couldn't) be avoided without losing affection or lightness is a stalemate that can be overcome by embracing where things went wrong. At the same time, it refers to the artist’s creative process, in which a work of art can crumble at any time by intuitively misplacing a line. He fucked it up. But it's fine.

The palm trees in the series I have been a bad place once, today I am a paradise (2021-now) look like they just weathered a bad storm. The clash between the exotic nature of the palm tree, and the destructive power of fragile nature toys with our expectations of this motif. At the same time, recovery is once more the driving force, an idea that’s underlined by Any paradise exists only by the grace of its scars (2023). The real paradise doesn’t consist of exotic travels to look forward to, or an afterlife that rewards us for having dealt with this earthly existence. Right now, there is only now. Later, there will also be now. The artist appoints each and everyone of us as the captain of our own paradise. There’s no use running away anymore.

With Death is a dance (2023) and the death of paradise in I'll dance you to my paradies (2023), De Geyter points out that death is tied to life’s movement. We don’t have to pretend death doesn’t exist, because there is always something left behind after each loss. Every form of life is an eruption that eventually slows down. The series Souls (2021-present) depicts the unremitting energy of De Geyter’s passed-away twins that persists within a shared movement. When one moves, so does the other – in an existence where time has no place and everything is temporary. The artist rejects the Western concept of linear time as a template for the successive steps to be taken throughout our days, weeks, months. Instead, he reaches for a circular sense of time that reveals itself as a dance partner on the path to paradise, along the way inviting a repetition of motifs that bring in the essence of acceptance.

The paper flags emphasise the fragile balance between finding, losing, and recovering – like a contemporary memento mori. Where, usually, a flag is constructed to stand the test of time as an unshakable symbol of territoriality, these unclear signalling blank ones are set up to be torn from the beginning. The artist communicates in advance that the space he dares to appropriate is only temporarily his. The wind rips the flags to shreds but blows on, transporting an ode to life in its endless movement.

‘You’re never alone in the wind’s rustling. Whenever I feel alone, I go outside, and then the stories hidden in the wind become audible. It's elusive. You can't grab or find anything in the wind, while you can confide so much to it. The wind carries a lot.’

Text by Femke Vandenbosch

October 2022 - WELCOME BACK TO THE NEW BEGINNING - Ontsteking, Ghent.

“It is playing with the children in me, albeit on a very deep level, but it is and continues to be playing”

Bert De Geyter's art practice sprang from an identifiable moment of colossal loss that triggered an all-encompassing loving insight. Since then, the artist has grasped the essence, the wisdom of loss and letting go that the butterfly children brought. It is not escapism but embracing the brutal reality. It is the beauty of radical acceptance. Each work is a memento mori, celebrating the death that the Western world so anxiously hides from view, as an ode to life. Honoring the all-binding force, the universal source of impermanence and resurrection.

From the loss was the smiling epicurean born. Humor and language are important themes in the work. Fucking Adorable (2021) and Look into my Eyes (2021) treat text as form and connect with the conceptual power of the word paintings by artist Christopher Wool and the psychoanalytic self-references of Joseph Kosuth. The title of the series I have been a bad place, today I am a Paradise (any paradise exists only by the grace of its scars) also portrays the love for poetry and wink at an Instagram world of inspirational quotes, self-development and likes. The graphic background of the artist gives him the confidence to work with archetypes such as the paradise referential palm tree and the symbolism of a rainbow (baby). Like Ed Ruscha, the artist does not shy away from illustrative influences and uses them at the same time as a joke. For example, the spiral of circles is a reference to “the map of a rainbow”.

The materials used and the gestures are those of a passionate draftsman. The color palette is black and white in all its nuances and gradations, referring to all colors. It can also be the contour of a memory or the shadow of a vision. The making process is intuitive. The first step is to build a canvas like a nest or camp for the star children. The works of art are constructed using techniques that are closer to the working method of a sculptor than a painter. The subsequent letters and shapes are sculpted layer by layer, which gives the artworks their transparency. As with action painting, this process leaves traces of the action. “There is always something left behind,” says the artist.

The physical act is important and repetitive. In this ritual event, not a single step can be forgotten. The repetition of certain shapes such as the circle, palm tree and letters draws on this ritual power. They become almost abstract studies that go straight to the essence. A story of a tribe was created with shelters and phenomena to create a framework. But the intuitive, almost meditative way of working, akin to Eastern painters such as Ufan Lee, continuously clashes with the artist's urge to label and archive. The anecdotal disappears and the story is translated/told by the way of making, as a spontaneous religion and synthesis.

“It is playing with the children in me, albeit on a very deep level, but it is and continues to be playing”, the artist says.