Johan Gelper

Johan Gelper (b.1980) is an artist currently living in Ghent, Belgium whose work is a synthesis of the natural with industrial and geometric elements with organic forms. His sculptures can be assembled and disassembled, and each piece grows from the previous ones. He almost always builds his playful assemblages from existing materials. They are airy objects, resembling a drawing or a simple scribble. His strength lies in the assemblage of loose, anomalous elements into an image that clearly shows cohesion. Existing forms and objects suddenly take on an entirely different meaning in a new context.

The Line is a fundamental element in Johan Gelper’s sculptures - whether it is the flowing curved contours of his “demountable spatial drawings” or the constructed found materials of his “botanicals.” His demountable drawings in space become energetic open sculptures as we walk around them and take in their movement. These forms are created through careful exploration, observation and sensing of the environment, and the same goes for his use of colour. His personal visual language is never completely abstract, nor figurative, his works with colour usually arise intuitively and always from perception. The influence of a colour on the form of a structure or sculpture or on the interaction with a space or architecture defines the perception of it.