Every day, as human beings, we accumulate apparently banal, visual experiences which offer us guidelines and instructions with no intervention by our consciousness.In this context, Wassily Kandinsky spoke of “Great abstraction, great realism” and of a “reduction of art to its artistic essence, which could only ultimately lead to a moulded life with an emphasis on certain forms.” This leitmotif is also found in the work of Yves Zurstrassen, the inventor of forms who conglutinates his experiences and his creative energy entirely consciously. In a certain segment of his artistic work, he transforms the codes and impulses inherent to these apparently banal experiences and transposes them into his unique, formal language, which has become his international hallmark.

Following a highly successful exhibition at the IKOB (the contemporary art mu-seum in Eupen) in 2004, I invited Yves Zurstrassen to present works from 2009 in the context of an exhibition called “Grid Paintings – Aktuelle abstrakte malerei” (Grid Paint-ings – Contemporary Abstract Painting) in the heart of Belgium’s German-speaking community, not far from Germany and the Netherlands. This second exhibition is per-fectly timed, as during recent years the Brussels artist has produced highly contempo-rary pieces, which fit squarely within the worldwide trend towards this new, interna-tional abstraction tinged with conceptualism. Of course, in his view they are essentially a matter of form and colour, but the focus of his interest is this contrast and tension between the expressive freedom of the brushstroke and a very strict conception of the composition of the painting.

On his travels, Zurstrassen uses his mobile phone to photograph all kinds of structures, motifs, grids and frames found in the streets, houses and historic buildings which constitute a part of our European cultural identity. Through a unique and highly complex combinatory technique, where initial photographic information is associated with computer-assisted image processing linked up to a cutting machine, he creates an extremely fine stencil in unprinted newspaper which he uses several times during the painting process, pasting it onto the linen, covering it with colour, alternating lay-ers of paint on the stencils and stencils on the layers of paint. In a very short space of time which assumes a prior conceptualisation of the composition, choice of colours and surface structure, the artist has to create his painting with a relative speed without ever being able to contemplate its entirety. At the end of this operation, he seeks out all the glued stencils hidden beneath the layers of paint and detaches them, like membranes, using tweezers and at the same time he removes part of the preceding pictorial layers; it is a composition method that is resolutely opposed to the traditional technique of a strata of accumulated paint.

Zurstrassen’s formal language is based on signs, symbols and colours, to become an abstract, pictorial language marked by superimpositions of highly gestural brush-strokes and endlessly repeated, recurrent motifs, with networks, grids and geometric structures. We encounter these daily in the polymorphous plant and animal world, in the structures of manhole covers, the designs on ceramic wall and floor tiles, printed

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motifs on wallpaper, fabrics and carpets, as well as in mural reliefs, friezes and window frames. They are also found in geometric symbols specific to various cultures or in the materials of fences and wooden palisades, visual screens, structured glass and even in structural analyses established by scientists to represent atoms, crystals and molecules.

Since the early 1980s, Yves Zurstrassen has worked in the field of abstract paint-ing, leagues ahead of the residual influences of modern Parisians that are still exhibited nationally, even though conceptual art is above all presented in international exhibi-tions.

It was not until the German artist Gerhard Richter brought painting out of the shadows and helped the medium of oil to achieve a new status that art critics and exhi-bition curators began once again to look at abstraction. American artists from the New York scene, but also and above all Europeans such as Peter Doig, Günther Förg and Bernard Frize, met with great interest. The Brussels Region recently commissioned Yves Zurstrassen to incorporate a work of art into an urban context. In April 2009, A Beauti-ful Day was solemnly unveiled at the Gare de l’Ouest underground station in Molen-beek, one of the busiest intersections in the Brussels transport network. A four-metre high wall, extending about one hundred metres alongside the train track, is filled with a host of motifs borrowed from cultures from around the world. Zurstrassen transferred them onto metal plates, sometimes by making photographic enlargements of his paint-ings. The entire work expresses the demographic plurality of this multicultural district of Brussels.

Zurstrassen produces free painting, as aspired to by the protagonists of abstrac-tionism. It is painting that expresses neither perceptible, personal feelings nor any mes-sage, not even political. He invites the observer to find his own way into his painting by positioning himself freely in relation to the form, colour and movement, as well as these motifs which belong to his sphere and take into account the social context.

Zurstrassen’s painting constitutes a unique renewal of the pictorial technique and structural treatment of the painting’s surface, through the application of oil on canvas.

It is a permanent tribute to forms, colours, movements and structures which, fol-lowing the meandering course of aesthetics, flow into the immensity of the sublime.

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Francis Feidler est né à Malmedy en 1950.Professeur des arts plastiques à l’Athénée de Bütgenbach entre 1974 et 1990, il réalise à partir 1977 comme artiste une œuvre conceptuelle autour de l’idée d’“ELASTICOMMUNICATION”, une création linguistique qu’il invente pour ses installations, objets, collages, dessins et installations, maintenues en équilibre par des forces physiques de traction et de compression. Suivent des expositions en galeries et musées en Belgique, Allemagne, Hollande et France, dont le Prix de la Jeune Peinture au Palais des Beaux-Arts à Bruxelles en 1981.

Fondateur de l’IKOB (Internationales Kunstzentrum Ostbelgien) en 1993, qui se nomme à partir de 2005 IKOB Musée d’Art Contemporain Eupen (musée de la Communauté Germanophone de Belgique), Francis Feidler est en même temps son directeur et curateur. Il a organisé depuis, plus de soixante expositions à l’IKOB et à l’étranger. Citons entre autres : – “Kontakt 93”, avec Bijl, Deleu, Charlier, Lohaus, Corillon, Ann Veronica Janssens, Lizène, etc. ; – “Volle Scheunen 97”, avec Tony Cragg, Gloria Friedmann, Marie Jo Lafontaine, Leisgen, Dossi ; – Et des expositions individuelles de Günther Förg, Marcel Broodthaers, Jacques Charlier, Lili Dujourie, Edward Dwurnik, Bert De Beul, Johan Tahon, Michel François, Elke Krystufek, Franz West, Erwin Wurm, Yves Zurstrassen, Denmark, Jan Van Imschoot, Loek Grootjans… En 2005 Francis Feidler fonde The IKOB Collection, qui compte actuellement plus que 400 donations d’œuvres contemporaines muséales, une collection appréciée pour sa qualité et son indépendance vis-à-vis d’un marché qui uniformise les collections des musées.

Geboren in Malmedy in 1950, war von 1974 bis 1990 Kunsterzieher am Gymnasium von Bütgenbach. Ab 1977 verwirklicht er als Künstler konzeptuelle Arbeiten rund um die Idee der „ELASTIKOMMUNIKATION“, eine eigene Wortschöpfung für seine Installationen, Objekte, Kollagen und Zeichnungen, in denen durch physische Zug- und Spannkräfte ein Gleichgewicht entsteht.Es folgen Ausstellungen in Galerien und Museen in Belgien, Deutschland, Frankreich und die Niederlande, sowie Auszeichnungen wie der Preis für junge Malerei in Brüssel im Jahre 1981 (Prix de la Jeune Peinture au Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles).

Im Jahre 1993 gründet Francis Feidler das IKOB, Internationales Kunstzentrum Ostbelgien, Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst Eupen. Für dieses Museum der Deutschsprachigen Gemeinschaft Belgiens, organisierte er als Direktor und Kurator bis heute über sechzig Ausstellungen im ikob und außerhalb. So zum Beispiel:– „Kontakt 93“ mit Werken von Bijl, Deleu, Charlier, Lohaus, Corillon, Ann Veronica Janssens, Lizène…;– „Volle Scheunen 97“ mit Arbeiten von Tony Cragg, Gloria Friedmann, Marie Jo Lafontaine, Leisgen, Dossi...;– Einzelausstellungen unter anderem mit Günther Förg, Marcel Broodthaers, Jacques Charlier, Lili Dujourie, Edward Dwurnik, Bert De Beul, Johan Tahon, Michel François, Elke Krystufek, Franz West, Erwin Wurm, Yves Zurstrassen, Denmark, Jan Van Imschoot, Loek Grootjans...In 2005 gründet Feidler „The Ikob Collection“ – eine Sammlung von über 400 Schenkungen musealer zeitgenössischer Kunstwerke; eine Sammlung die besticht durch ihre Qualität und einer Unabhängigkeit einem Markt gegenüber, der den Sammlungen von Museen Gleichförmigkeit aufdrängt.

Francis Feidler was born in Malmedy in 1950. He taught visual arts at the secondary school in Bütgenbach from 1974 until 1990, and in 1977 he also began working as an artist, on a conceptual oeuvre associated with the notion of “ELASTICOMMUNICATION”, a linguistic term which he coined for his installations, objects, collages, drawings and installations, maintained in balance by the physical forces of traction and compression. This was followed by exhibitions in galleries and museums in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and France, and notably the Young Painting Prize from the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1981.

He founded the Internationales Kunstzentrum Ostbelgien (IKOB) in 1993, known as the IKOB, Museum of Contemporary Art in Eupen since 2005, which was established as a Museum of the Germanophone Community of Belgium. Francis Feidler is both its director and curator and has organised over sixty exhibitions there and abroad, including:– “Kontakt 93”, with Bijl, Deleu, Charlier, Lohaus, Corillon, Ann Veronica Janssens, Lizène, etc;– “Volle Scheunen 97”, with Tony Cragg, Gloria Friedmann, Marie Jo Lafontaine, Leisgen and Dossi;– Solo exhibitions with Günther Förg, Marcel Broodthaers, Jacques Charlier, Lili Dujourie, Edward Dwurnik, Bert De Beul, Johan Tahon, Michel François, Elke Krystufek, Franz West, Erwin Wurm, Yves Zurstrassen, Denmark, Jan Van Imschoot, Loek Grootjans, etc.In 2005, Feidler founded “The Ikob Collection”, which currently contains over 400 donations of contemporary museum items. It is a collection which is appreciated for its quality and independence from the market, which contributes to the uniformisation in museum collections.

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Francis Feidler