Artist statement

I am a contemporary artist who has always questioned the given norms, values and rituals of our everyday lives. I work with illustrated humanoid and organic forms and fuse them with mechanical elements. In most of my work, I use old book pages as obscure backgrounds, with humanoid figures in the foreground. I draw dark, rough shadows to represent the shadows in the allegory of Plato’s cave. All these elements create a distinctive visual language to create a physical embodiment of the human mind.

My process starts with a question that arises based on my own experiences, my perceptions and my observations of others. This becomes an idea that aligns within the contexts of pattern, memory, consumerism, manipulation, paradigms or control. Then I research images of objects, such as pipes, belts, springs, and wheels, and fuse them with my own drawings. The mechanical elements in my work are metaphors for how our environment programs us with unconscious automatic behaviour. These symbols become part of a collage of metaphors. Belts, for example, represent constraint, addiction, pleasure and pain. Cloned images represent how repetitive thoughts build towards beliefs and lessons.

All of my art materialises from larger contexts, such as philosophy, metaphysics, science and spirituality. Throughout my life I realised my personal reality is the result of how I think. Questions from my childhood in the early 1980s have shaped my work today. I was raised religiously, unlike my best friend, and our beliefs were very different. This led me to ask questions, such as What if I had grown up somewhere else? Would I be a different person? I started to wonder about my own thoughts and beliefs. Had I been programmed by my environment? Are those programs running my life? Are we stuck in our repeating loops of life? The question of being in control or being controlled became a curiosity throughout my life and also in my work. In my work It all starts with questions based on my own experiences, perceptions and observing others. Which choices and beliefs are your own and which are put there by our environment? Are we in a state of ignorance, and how do we get out? Are we aware of our struggles, or who’s pulling the strings? Do we create a personal reality that isn’t our own? In my art I reflect and expose these thoughts and beliefs by showing another perspective on day-to-day behaviour.

About WOL75 

Jasper Wolters ( b. November 29, 1975) known professionally as WOL75 is a Dutch contemporary artist based in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.  WOL75 creates Mixed-media, digital, and animation art. Starting off as an interior builder and cabinet maker in the 1990s. He has worked in mixed-media, digital, and animation art for more than twenty years. WOL75 is an Academy of Fine Arts graduate in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (1999–2004).