Since 1996 Johan Clarysse has been following his own track as a painter. He studied philosophy before he definitely took the path of the visual arts. Clarysse’s paintings want to ‘be enigmatic in a transparent way’. Frequently they refer to the world of film and the media, advertising techniques, scraps from songs, and philosophical questions and citations. The statute of both language and image are uncertain in his art. Whether it concerns Japanese erotic prints, film stills, procession images, landscapes, portraits of philosophers or psychiatric patients, the painter appropriates the image in such a way that it loses its original self-evident and unambiguous meaning.

His paintings display a layered, hybrid imagery that questions and researches the ambiguity pproper tot human nature. His paintings tease and confuse, destabilize well-known images and themes, giving them power and force. Thus an oeuvre is created that is both playful and serious, clear and equivocal, subdued and intense. A second monograph about his work 'Walden & other suspicions' is published in 2014 in collaboration with MER Paper Kunsthalle.