In October 2020, Pierre Mertens and curator Edith Doove made a first presentation of his recent paintings under the name ‘Loving Care’ in the Blikfabriek, Antwerp (B). Now they is looking for a suitable place to show this work within the international art environment.
For this series of 12 portraits, he now comes back to classical painting that he had abandoned since the 1970’s, because in his view only painting creates the right distance to look at this suffering.
He started from photos of their child with untreated hydrocephalus that Filipino mothers posted on Facebook. Although the big heads are confrontational, Pierre Mertens paints these children seen through the eyes of these caring mothers.
He opts for a large format (2m x 1.5m), transferring these loving snapshots into paintings.
With this series, he draws attention to a gigantic global health problem that remains underexposed but affects 1 million children worldwide every year. 80% in developing countries where the vast majority have no access to health care.
The visual artist and the activist Pierre Mertens meet again in this series. As always Mertens looks for social relevance with his work, but here both aspects of him literally come together.
He wants to show this studio work, which is rare for him, within the art circuit where the portraits can be viewed and discussed with sufficient distance and respect.
For the opening, Prof. Dr. Dirk De Wachter and Pierre Mertens conducted a conversation on ‘the art of caring’.
For an interview with the artist for ATV news follow this link. Both the conversation and the interview are in Dutch and subtitles are in English.
Curator Edith Doove
Photos: Walter Saenen
