The results of this process vary widely in appearance and meaning, but usually produce a distorted, abstract image of a place or a person. Not a static representation, but a world or person in flux.
Aäron Willem is an artist with a background in philosophy. Around 2019, he developed a visual language and artistic method in which philosophy is deeply interwoven. His way of working is based on a fairly simple principle: he paints different figurative images over each other in often transparent layers. The results of this process vary widely in appearance and meaning, but usually produce a distorted, abstract image of a place or a person. Not a static representation, but a world or person in flux.
Extended Family is a long-term project that started in 2019 with an open call from Aäron to become part of his family. This could and still can be done simply by sending him a photo of yourself. Aäron then portrays you together with other faces in a painting in which all these family members merge into a new face. Aäron intends to continue this process until he dies.
Fuller Places also consists of a growing series of paintings. Here, Aäron paints different events on top of each other. Almost as if in a diary, he brings together the things he experiences himself, things he reads in the newspaper or historical events: all these different events come together in fairly abstract paintings in which a landscape or space can still be recognised.
Motivated by a nine-month residency at WARP, Aäron decided this year to put these series on hold for a while in order to develop new ideas from a tabula rasa. He currently works less on the basis of photographs and more on the basis of memories and imagination. This has made his work even more personal and introspective.