Pieter Vermeersch

Kortrijk 1973

By: Beatriz Herráez

Pieter Vermeersch studied at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp and at the Higher Institute for Visual Arts in Ghent, and his first group exhibitions were held in the mid-1990s.

The dispassionate, impersonal reproduction of the image in painting has been a persistent feature in Pieter Vermeersch’s work. Attempts to transcribe an abstract image with a mechanical, calculated precision, where ‘the more systematically you try to erase spontaneity from the image, the more tenaciously it manifests itself,” to quote the artist from an interview with the critic Dieter Roelstraete.

 ‘Exact reproduction is not only unlivable, it is simply impossible’, points out Vermeersch in the same conversation. The necessarily fictitious, erratic nature of that operation, and the impossibility of faithfully reproducing a pictorial image are the rationale of that ‘new objectivity’ contained in the author’s output. Vermeersch addresses the issue of the demystification of the experience of art and its relationship with industrial production, and of the image from his knowledge of the philosophy of the image and his most controversial theses, disputed by critical theorists.

Solo shows of Pieter Vermeersch’s work have been held at the Blueproject Foundation (Barcelona, 2016); the Perrotin Gallery (Hong Kong, 2015); the Greta Meert Gallery (Brussels, 2015); the Carl Freedman Gallery (London, 2014); Projecte SD (Barcelona, 2013); the Elisa Platteau & Cie Gallery (Brussels, 2012); and the Londonewcastle Project Space (London, 2011). His pieces have been included in group exhibitions at the Antwerp Contemporary Art Museum (2003); the Institut d’art contemporain (Villeurbanne, France, 2016); the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Ghent, Belgium 2011); the Brussels Centre of Fine Arts (2007); and Casino Luxembourg (Luxembourg, 2011).