Laurent Dumortier

Born in 1989 in Namur, works and lives in Namur (B)

About the Artist

He studied in the drawing workshop at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels (2010-2016) and obtained an in-depth Master's degree in partnership with the ULG. He has participated in several artistic residencies including the Fondation Privée du Carrefour des arts (2019-2020) and has been selected for the Prix artistique de la ville de Tournai (2021), the Prix Jeune artiste du Rouge-Cloître (2022).

In his work, there is a recurrent questioning of the frame, the narration, the figures, the memory, the anecdotal, the dream and a disturbing part of the human being in his nocturnal life as well as a mysterious part of bestiality. Laurent Dumortier uses charcoal as a raw material and paper (japanese, tracing paper, polyester, watercolour) to tell stories mixing reality and fantasy. He is very attached to the works of Constant Permeke, Balthus, Pierre Klossowski, Wilhelm Hammershoi and above all Francis Bacon because he finds this "letting go" of form and matter; this gesture which gives birth to figures in a permanent mutation and this narrativity of the image between tension and sobriety.