... It always focuses on the precarious, insecure, vulnerable moment between salvation and loss, between gravity and buoyancy, between solidity and liquidity, between tangibility and disappearance, between heaven and earth, like everything that is winged, ready to depart, longing for the absorbing height beyond reach, which renders invisible... (Francis Smets)

Two things that have always aroused the artist's interest and that regularly - if not continually - influence his work, are gravity and the perpetuum mobile. On the one hand there is the boyish fascination for these phenomena and on the other hand there is the recognition of man's fate, death and desire.

The last couple of years the focus has been on the creation of monumental yet fragile structures "custom built" for the spot where they end up. The works of art usually consist of a light structure of galvanized steel wire hung from dozens of pieces of string or cables. Sometimes the structure is covered with a semi-transparent skin of voile or a finely-woven net stretched over it.