Fine Art 3rd place winner

For "Now it's day but I am dreaming" Motmans’ freely uses negatives from holiday pictures and slides from his parents' collection. The artist basis is thus built on personal memories and experiences he had as a young boy. They are fragmented impressions of travels, often to the south of Europe. Assumably these images will also evoke in the viewer echoes from the past. Of discolored holiday snaps. This effect is intensified by combining his own images with snippets from nostalgic postcards. Now it's day but I am dreaming shows new surreal landscapes balancing between blurred visions and feverish hallucinations. Mountains fuse with oceans, forests with ice floes. Graceful bodies merge with sturdy but equally delicate landscapes. It is nostalgic and futuristic at the same time.
From this body of work speaks a fascination with time.
Motmans’ pictures express a desire for another world. A longing for familiarity and nostalgia.
His images seem to embrace a threatening, futuristic vision. As if Marcel Proust glances at Henry David Thoreau while a young Brian Eno watches cheerfully and provides the scene with soft rustling sounds.

GERT MOTMANS (b.1972 Hasselt, Belgium) graduated from the fashion department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where he still lives and works as a visual artist and fashion designer. Feeling the need to express himself through imagery he later attended photography classes at the same Art Academy. In 2018 he created FRNCS Studio—“FRNCS” (pronounced “Francis”) is an acronym for “fragments and collected instants”—a project combining photography and collage where personal nostalgia, natural, sacred and architectural themes are merged into surreal compositions.

“silence” – Galerie Esther Woerdehoff – Paris – Group exhibition
Unseen Amsterdam” with Ingrid Deuss gallery
Now it’s day but I am dreaming” – solo exhibition – Ingrid Deuss Gallery Antwerp
“Paris Photo” with Galerie Esther Woerdehoff Paris

Winner of the “memory series analogue” category at the Contemporary Collage Magazine Awards ’22 - UK
Honorable mention winner at Hariban Awards 2022 - Kyoto
Finalist “Fresh 2022” – Klompching Gallery – New York
Finalist LensCulture Art Photography Awards 22