Hansen Joke

• Born in 1979, Belgium
• Lives in Bilzen , works in Hasselt

The work of Joke Hansen (°1979) manifests itself as a large collection of questions regarding the how and what of painting. In her work Hansen is incessantly on the move, in search of the next step, the next level, trying to find answers to painterly questions that arise. The constant movement during this search is what often constitutes the subject matter of her visual language. For example in the paintings Maze (2020) and Minecraft
(2020), the two paintings seem to represent a walking or climbing course, with titles that refer to the world of computers and gaming. However, here it’s not the player who takes on the role of an avatar and has to go on an adventure tour to overcome all kinds of obstacles and climb further and further each time. Here, it’ s the artist herself and subsequently the viewer, who goes on an endless journey of looking, reviewing and
recalibrating. In this same endless loop of exercise, Hansen’s working method circles non-stop around paintings, collages and sculptures. The discipline of painting is the unmistakable axis which propels her visual conception, the leitmotiv in her relentless search for the right image. By exploring the boundaries of the medium to the bone in terms of shape, surface and paint, her works often present themselves almost as fremdkörper, as if they themselves are surprised of what they’ve become.
Iris Paschalidis, Gent, March, 15, 2021 (Translated by Mathias Swings)