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. Repetition, mechanical structures, and dark, rough shadows are recurring elements in my work. Together, these elements create a visual language that gives physical form to what happens inside the human mind.

My process starts with a question that arises from my own experiences, perceptions, and observations of others. Some experiences stay in my mind and keep circulating until I give them a physical form. Making art is a way for me to process these experiences. Once they become visible and tangible, they no longer have to exist only within me. They can exist on their own.

These experiences and questions often connect to patterns, memory, consumerism, manipulation, paradigms, and control. I research images of objects such as pipes, belts, springs and wheels and fuse them with my own drawings. The mechanical elements become metaphors for how our environment can program us with unconscious and automatic behavior. Repetition and cloned images reflect how thoughts can develop into beliefs and patterns that influence how we experience our reality.

Questions from my childhood in the early 1980s have shaped my work today. I was raised religiously, while my best friend was not, and our beliefs were very different. This made me wonder: What if I had grown up somewhere else? Would I believe the same things? Would I be a different person?

I started to question my own thoughts and beliefs. Had I been programmed by my environment? Are those programs still running my life? Are we stuck in repeating loops without being aware of them? The question of being in control or being controlled has remained a curiosity throughout my life and continues to shape my work.

My work does not attempt to provide answers. Instead, I make my experiences and questions tangible and use them to show another perspective on everyday behavior. Which choices and beliefs are really our own, and which have been shaped by our environment? How much of our personal reality do we create ourselves?

Ultimately, it comes back to one question:

How much of who I am is actually me?

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 as an interior builder and cabinet maker in the 1990s. He has worked in mixed-media, digital, and animation art for more than twenty-two years. WOL75 is an Academy of Fine Arts graduate in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (1999–2004).