©Nel Aerts, photo: Isabelle Pateer, 2021
° 1987
Lives in Antwerpen (BE), born in Turnhout (BE).
Nel Aerts lives and works in Antwerp. She makes drawings, paintings and collages, in a playful and colourful style, in which diverging traces can be recognised from a rich tradition in the art of painting. She uses an abstract play of lines, which is penetrated in a radical manner by Cubist figures, round forms or even surfaces of colour. Her work is never artificial or far-fetched; these are direct pictures, sometimes figurative, containing a simple, innocent pictorial language that breathes a large degree of freedom.
Nel Aerts paints without complexes, almost like a spontaneous experiment, for extracting as much individuality as possible from her paint and imagination. With her brushes, she almost carelessly creates impressions of kings, pub visitors, slender female bodies or decorative wallpaper. However busy or cut up they may sometimes be, her scenes always radiate a certain peace, like a picture from a movie that is momentarily put on hold and is then fixed as a stubbornly strong Gestalt. The same is true for her drawings. She can turn the word "nothing" into something on the canvas.
Her self-portraits, on the other hand, have both a cartoonish and a tragic quality. She poses uneasily in our own small world, even if we do not know what is pose and what is real. In a recent work she uses more and more textiles, with which he makes collages that allow her to replace the classic texture of oil on canvas with a new medium.
>Nel Aerts, Goodbye Old Paint, 2009.Video, video, super 8mm film transfer to hd, 00:02:27.
>Nel Aerts, Tribune Sculptuur, 2011.Video, video, super 8mm film transfer to hd, 00:01:18.
>Nel Aerts, Hide And Seek, 2014.Installation, textile, iron, wood, 188 x 125 cm.
>Nel Aerts, The Best Couples in the World (Like Salt and Pepper), 2015.Multiple, inkjet prints on glossy paper, meranti wood, 57 x 44 x 7 cm.
>Nel Aerts, Huiselijk tafereel, 2016.Other, textiel.
>Nel Aerts, Lord Nelson FW17, 2017.Object, textile.
>Nel Aerts, The Best Helmsmen Stand on Shore, 2017.Painting.
>Nel Aerts, Dobberende Dimpna, 2018.Painting.
>Nel Aerts, Dear Night, Will We Part Ways?, 2019-2020.Painting, acrylic and oil on panel, 61 x 56 cm.
>Nel Aerts, Waddle Work Film, 2019.Video, video, super 8mm film transfer to hd, 00:08:05.
>Nel Aerts, The Servant Serves, 2019.Multiple, 3d printed pitcher, individually hand painted, folded on welded steel.
> Exhibition: EXTRA MUROS: Geel – Middle Gate II – The Story of Dymphna. 15 September 2018 - 04 November 2018.
> Exhibition: Let's Play Museum. 10 June 2023 - 17 September 2023.
> Exhibition: Lipstick and Gas Masks – The City Collection Antwerp. 13 February 2021 - 18 April 2021.
> Exhibition: Salon de Peinture. 17 January 2019 - 31 March 2019.
> Exhibition: Show me yours & I'll show you mine – Vaast Colson: Still some cream on the screen & Kati Heck: Holy Hauruck. 19 February 2016 - 29 May 2016.
> Exhibition: Still some cream on the screen. 19 February 2016 - 29 May 2016.
> Exhibition: The City Collection: IN/SIGHT. 16 May 2024 - 06 January 2025.
No image
> Ensemble: 2020.
No image
> Ensemble: An Architecture for Art - Nel Aerts.
No image
> Ensemble: An Architecture for Art - Philippe Van Snick.
> Ensemble: Middle Gate.
> Ensemble: SPIRITUALITEIT | SPIRITUALITY.
> Ensemble: The City Collection / De Stadscollectie / La collection municipale.