Philippe Van Snick
(Ghent,
1946 - Brussels,
2019 )
Philippe Van Snick made his debut with minimalist abstract paintings, but from the 1970s onwards he developed a multimedia oeuvre that also includes photography, film, drawing, sculpture and installations. He systematically analyses the abstract concept of space alongside the concrete spatial experience. Based on decimal systems and dualistic opposites (day and night, order and chaos, the spiritual and the material), he constructs a simple and manageable, yet dynamic visual language that simultaneously touches on the everyday and the universal. Van Snick uses rectangles, squares, bars, cubes and ellipses, and a ten-part colour palette. It consists of the six primary and secondary colours, gold and silver, that have a physical value and represent the material, and white and black, that represent the immaterial. For Van Snick meaning arises from the relationship – created or manipulated by him – of the work to the room and the relationship of the viewer to this work in the room.
