With an open mind, Chris Meulemans explores the human urge to manipulate and control our environment. She does this in paintings that, thanks to an enigmatic combination of figurative elements and abstract techniques, attract the viewer and encourage them to read their own story in the image.

In earlier work, Meulemans already studied human behaviour, dealing with trauma and the genetic manipulation of animals. She continues this exploration, with the human manipulation of nature, in her recent paintings. The plants and flowers that she depicts are a vehicle to evoke the fragility of nature, but also of our daily life, of our imposed structures in an almost desperate attempt to control nature. Emphasized or fragmentary grid patterns in the paintings show a discrete reference to science, to the human urge to categorize, to study and therefore to control everything.

She plays with layers and shapes: the cloudy boundary between foreground and background, and the varying degree of abstraction, create an alienating feeling. The works do not provide a peaceful security; they ask questions. The artist's personal vulnerability also plays a part in this. She does not shy away from loading much of herself, of her own emotion, into the work.

Meulemans’ found titles, which she connects with her images in an intuitive way, further mislead the viewer. In their absurdity they have something funny, but also disturbing: the context created by the combination of title and image is uncomfortable. Behind the painted layers of her visual-poetic work, a door to the imagination is opened. Every painting is the start of a sentence, the beginning of a story that the viewer can continue as they see fit.

text by Tamara Beheydt