Pieter Vermeersch — °1973

Applying color gradients to a bicycle frame introduces abstraction into a concrete, functional world. The murals I create in situ on architectural structures have always been understood as an interplay in which the intangible is nourished by the tangible — and vice versa. This application can be seen as an extended, intensified manifestation of that idea, cutting through both time and space.

Willem Cole — °1957

Willem Cole is a Belgian artist who creates visual poetry based on a systematic approach to his medium.

The strict forms avoid gesture, the fixed colours bypass impulse. The subject is hidden within parameters: adjacent rectangular blocks carry the volume of his family, mosaic slats are precisely as long as the artist himself, two colours represent a cherished friend. Line by line, he constructs principles and portraits with precision. Using just three coloured pencils, Cole traces paths that lead to the beauty of the mathematical — a pursuit he seamlessly extends to his affection for the people around him. Translating their dimensions into art is like sharing a glass of wine together while Baudelaire himself sits at the table. Cole’s art, which may appear abstract at first glance, is far from abstract. The formal structures serve as a veil for what we wish to hold onto forever: the warmth of essence.

Willem Boel — °1983

The works in the series “Le Chef-d’œuvre Inconnu”, which served as the starting point for my design for Jaegher, were created by spraying layers of paint and other materials such as varnish, plaster, and polyester onto a support. That support is usually an undefined object — a small table, a chair, or a shelf. The layers of material build up rapidly and are not shaped by me, but by the turbulence caused by the spray gun. The work is simultaneously eroded and formed. Erosion and growth occur at the same time, and the surface, once again, becomes a guided residue. I believe that the history of actions forms the residue, and that a residue therefore cannot be made. Unless, of course, one is a master of the act — or a slave to the search for that residue.

Elizabeth Ibarra — °1986

I love bikes. The feeling I have of riding a bike since my very first time I rode one as a child is a feeling of ‘exciting freedom’. Either going slowly or fast, riding under soft rain, under the shadows of trees or a funny looking cloud, under a completely naked sky, or with lots of my friends in the city streets of Guadalajara, all equal to a joyful ride. Nature and bike are very related in my experience; that’s why I thought to paint suns. As our warm star that keeps us alive and moving. So does the bike. I love the sun and I’m very inspired by the representations of the medieval suns. Here is the sun and the bike as one.

Gert Robijns — °1972

My Flat Land — In the bidon, it is never uphill or downhill. A few years ago, I was deeply engaged with the idea of water and its horizontality. The weight you experience when looking at an endless sea — the mass, but also the vista, the reflection, and the immateriality — is immense. At the same time, that sense of weightlessness, of floating, yet also of depth, is comparable to the feeling of climbing a mountain: starting from a small village at the foot and slowly gaining altitude. You find your rhythm, your heartbeat hovers just below its limit, and you learn to suffer with control. You feel yourself entering the zone — that state in which you could, it seems, go on riding forever. You reach for your bidon, drink, and slide it back into the holder as you keep pedalling. And suddenly you catch yourself — on a steeper stretch of the climb — realising that no matter how much your bike tilts, the water in the bidon always remains perfectly horizontal.