[mail art stigma archive] #17 Stefaan Loncke, painting, Belgium

My main concepts are the questioning of identity, and the Gap in cultures.

I use art as a medium to explore the concepts of Identity and non-Identity, position and non-position, the tension between nature and culture. I'm fascinated by what creates and escapes a culture, by what lies beyond the Gap in human norms and the multiplicity of phenomena within Culture, which envelop this Gap (this mouth of the primordial abbys which dissolves all identity).

I question, I examine.

To me, the question is of more importance then the answer. When the question results in an answer, I like to tear the answer open, creating new questions. I have difficulty to accept definite constructions (such as theories, criteria, images, etc...) and mistrust strivings who have this as a goal, for they lead towards the gaze of the Medusa.

I'm intrigued by the Gap behind identities, the Gap which no construction seems to escape. I'm intrigued by the human strivings trying to get even with this Gap... and concepts like 'love' and 'domination' which waver around the Gap.

These human strivings include the attempt to stipulate/identify the workings of raw nature, and endeavours to control/dominate raw nature by tearing her down into comprehensible parts. To this aim, one calls forth on units of measurement, which function as points of reference. Simultaneously to the diversity of the nature of these units of measurement, rise a diversity of cultures.

To make the unknown known, is a process which is subject to the restrictions of human perception and thinking. This implies that this process is formed through the fact of censorship. What cannot be perceived by the mind (or, what a subject does not want to perceive) is naturally censored. This censure reveals man’s cesure with nature and reality… the breaking point where reference and words fail him. It’s around this point that man’s mental and physical strivings provide him with fantasies and assumptions which fill in the gaps of the cesure. They make him blind for the existence of the gap, driven by some sort of horror vacui, for man wants all questions answered, he wants to comprehend, rule and dominate nature and reality. It's a domination which tries to bind the factor of uncertainity, of chaos.

Yet, this does not change how nature and reality is, or the way it behaves or acts. She escapes these human strivings and cultural workings, and forces men to make new theories, change perceptions, change their way of thinking… endlessly. Finally she always wins from these cultural workings by elements as decay and death.

I experiment with different disciplines such as drawing, painting, performance and and bodyworks. For my performance pieces, I often work together with other artists.

from https://pixels.com/profiles/stefaan-loncke

https://stefaanloncke.exto.org/