Biography

Koen Vermeule paints the ‘Stompin Grounds’ of our metropolitan environment. He depicts people who seem lost wandering around the world. The figures are rarely recognizable: the sets are often empty and spacious. As a viewer you are constantly left in the dark. The loitering youth are undoubtedly a plague on the neighborhood, but painted by Vermeule they become young poets who stare into the distance and muse about the rosy-fingered dawn.

On the painting Skywriter we see a young painter, or actually a graffiti artist (baseball cap, dirty, dark trousers) standing on the shoreline. The sea is calm, the sky is white and the young man uses the pure whiteness to write his tag in the air with his spray can – which actually seems to be working. In the emptiness three black arcs appear. They hang in the air like the beating wings of a bird. The combination of landscape, figure and gesture makes Skywriter a work loaded with symbolism. At the first look the saying ‘pissing in the wind’ comes to mind, reproducing a moment in which we over- estimate our own strength to that of the almighty force of nature – the young man uses a spray can and not a brush for a reason. Nevertheless Vermeule doesn’t only want to show power- lessness: the paint isn’t blown back into the young man’s face but hangs still in the air instead. This is a magical moment and that magic is strengthened by the title, which points back to the past where airplanes would write their (advertising) messages or beautiful stripes in clear blue skies on sunny days. All this leads to the suspicion that with Skywriter Vermeule wants to say something about ambition above all. That you have to stand by what you produce as an artist, for instance. And to never just accept the inevitable. That setbacks can make you stronger. This will give you wings.