OXYMORON
NICK ERVINCK - GNI-RI may2021
15/05/2021 > 25/09/2021
NICK ERVINCK (°1981) is a Belgian artist who lives and works in Lichtervelde (West Flanders). His career began as a child with a passion for the well-known building-block game Lego. He never read the building instructions, but he created, built and respresented his own architectural works. He first came into contact with the computer world at the age of thirteen, when his parents bought their first computer. For Nick, that was the beginning of a true symbiosis (a lasting and mutually beneficial association) between the worlds of technology and creation, between science and art.
At the age of fifteen, he started studying art and in 2003, he completed a Master’s degree in Mixed Media at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (KASK). There, he not only acquired professional knowledge but also new life skills: learning how to look, leaving the familiar path, he gained self-confidence and he learned how to think and express thoughts. With all that he’s learned, he will later shape his own unique language by developing and combining very diverse techniques (from computer modelling to architecture and polymer chemistry. A language that he constantly enriches and questions.
In 2009, he bought a former Renault garage in Lichtervelde, where he set up his studio, exhibition space, office and home. From there, he manages his work, which has since become internationally known in many European and Asian countries.
Nick emanates an incredible energy, a relentless will, an enormous work drive and an extremely clear vision.
OXYMORON
Oxymoron - a figure of speech that combines two words with seemingly contradictory meanings - summarises one of the most original aspects of Nick Ervinck’s work and characterises both his oeuvre and the world we live in.
With thirty ceramic works, which are exhibited for the first time ever, Nick Ervinck takes us to a world of contrasts, on the border between figurative and abstract art. His works doubts and questions, cause a certain tension, even a slight uneasiness. Indeed, it is impossible to determine definitively what one perceives. Do you think you see an organic or mineral form? Vegetable or animal? A flower in full bloom or a rotting fruit? It is all the more uncertain because it is extremely changeable. You see one thing and the next moment you see another: the tentacle of an octopus or the hand of a monstrous mutant, a dead coral or an eroded Gonshi rock, a pepper, a tomato or chewing gum? Are we looking through a microscope at a natural evolution or is this a future of the most frightening mutations? Sometimes you would literally like to eat what you see (it might look like delicious whipped cream) only to spit it out again just as quickly because you would suddenly remember that it is only a chemical trap. Nick Ervinck plays and enjoys the confusion. We sway back and forth between wonder and unease, between desire and rejection.
Nick reminds us that nothing is certain, nothing is self-evident. We are surfing on the crest of waves, in an unstable balance between dramatic prospects and scientific hope. At any moment, we can turn to one side or the other, depending on the choice we make. The contours of the future are taking shape today.
