Horizontal Drawing #2 Lecture Peter Morrens

Horizontal Drawing is a lecture series organised by lecturers at Sint Lucas Antwerpen. The series brings together artists, draftspeople and makers to explore the many facets of drawing. For its second edition, we welcome visual artist Peter Morrens (°1965, Lier). Morrens works across a wide range of visual languages: he draws, writes and paints under different names, creates objects and artist publications, designs architectural in-situ installations and develops long-duration, intensive performances. He regularly brings together these different aspects of his practice in large-scale, immersive installations, which also give his work new meaning. His artistic output could best be described as 'explosive', reflecting his fascination with the experience of time, sexuality, destruction, fetishism, unrest and transgression. His practice is driven by intuition. In a playful yet compelling way, he discovers, selects and reworks images. Perception itself, as well as the precise position of the viewer, occupies a central place in Morrens' work. He frequently revisits earlier works, deliberately disrupting the chronology of his oeuvre. This creates a constant, tension-filled and associative relationship between the parts and the whole, which temporarily enter into dialogue with the space and/or context. Morrens takes on the role of a provocateur within his multifaceted, ever-evolving oeuvre. Through an unrelenting gaze upon the world, and with a healthy dose of subversive humour, he questions everything around him. Our everyday language and social behaviour, our existential doubts, the conventions of the art world and political and social assumptions all come under critical scrutiny. Nor does he spare his own creations or autobiographical anecdotes.