Wim Nival (1968) works and lives in Ghent, Belgium
The small offers me an opportunity to experience the bigger picture.
– Wim Nival
Minimal but lived through, rhythmic and thoughtful, the work of Wim Nival doesn’t force itself upon you, but invites you to discover it.
Wim starts with material, which already has a lifetime behind it, and he adds, with simple means, a strong new story to the material. The result is a beautiful and harmonious oeuvre.
Wim Nival has an education as painter, but has increased his technical ability by following extra education in ceramics and free graphic. He finds ceramics too complex and a too slow material, but it did contribute to his feeling for materials and the tactility. Of the graphical lessons he took the attention for lines, levels and typo graphics with him.
Finding and collecting materials makes an important aspect of his artistic process.
Sometimes he finds a book, paper or a little wooden object and it is immediate clear
which image it must be. At the same time his studio is full of material and he is building an enormous archive. His statues are created very fast and direct, but the execution can take a while.
Perforations are a metaphor for thoughtlessness, silence. They anticipate the question ‘what makes the work, the paper, what stays, what is taken away?’ It makes you think regarding the themes of being present or absent, positive or negative. Placing statues left and right opposite to each other shows this ambivalence. The moment ‘now’ in the middle makes the moment between two thoughts.
The materials he uses are decaying. A process in which he does not interfere, simply because they are beautiful the way they are. It does not feel right to decide that a material cannot be alive, simply because he has worked at it. It strokes with the way he thinks. That becomes clear in his work.