Jan Van Imschoot
(Ghent,
1963 )
Jan Van Imschoot belongs to a generation of Belgian artists continuing a refined pictorial tradition. Like the oeuvres of Michaël Borremans and Thierry De Cordier, Van Imschoot’s shows the obsession of a craftsman. Each work is a succinct fusion of mockery, destruction and gnashing of teeth. The visual richness of his paintings refers both to current events and world literature, while the ambiguity of his titles reveals he is a man of wide reading. Moreover, from his contemporary perspective, the artist constantly refers to great examples from art history: the intensity of Tintoretto, the Ensor-like mockery or Van Gogh’s profusion of colours. Van Imschoot, who moved to France in 2013, constantly resists the commercial circus of the contemporary art scene. He himself describes his style, which changes according to his subject matter, as ‘anarcho-baroque’.
