Antwerp
Gert Motmans was born in Hasselt (Belgium).
He graduated from the Fashion Department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp where he still lives and works as a fashion designer. Feeling the need to express himself through image he later attended photography class at the same Art Academy.
In 2018 he created FRANCIS STUDIO - acronym for ‘fragments and collected instants’ A project combining photography and collage exploring the boundaries between the figurative and the abstract where personal nostalgia, natural, sacred and architectural themes are merged into surreal compositions.
“ I like to work very organically; intuitively let the work evolve and unfold by exploring my subconsciousness.
I’m interested in manipulating actuality into surreal or complete abstract visuals, by reimagining my own photographs or already existing images in a new state of reality.
Time or place become irrelevant, I don’t want to reproduce nor show facts but the essential and the soul.” -
Attracted by the darker side of things, the images are at times cinematic and dramatic, full of duality; darkness vs light, abstract vs figurative, chaos vs harmony, attraction vs rejection.
Evoking a form of emptiness, desolation and estrangement resulting in a poetic, mysterious and melancholic atmosphere.