Language, archetypes, and the universal power of loss are very important in De Geyter’s work. Art is communication, and words and images are interwoven in his practice. Drawing on personal experience, Bert is keenly aware of how comforting, healing, grounding, and empowering art can be.
With intellectual pleasure, he manages to elevate the personal into a universal and spiritual whole, with a particular interest in creating rituals and revealing the undercurrents that connect us. In addition to works on paper and canvas, his oeuvre includes sculptures, installations, sketchbooks, and textual works in public space. Large installations made of black-impregnated wood are cleverly interwoven with impressive canvases in the exhibition space. Letters and abstract forms play with black, white, and light. Language and structure occupy the space in layers. For De Geyter, play is essential and non-negotiable. This playful spirit is legible in each individual work and culminates in a powerful whole where sculpture, space, and line provoke an instinctive experience. It is in the totality of the experience, in what you do not see but feel, that the intensity and warmth of his “terribly joyous” work reveal themselves. It is there that an infinitely new beginning emerges, like a memory still in its infancy, a perpetuum mobile of hope.
Bert De Geyter took part in the group exhibition (expo)nentieel at DeNode (2024–2025, curator Hilde Van Canneyt).