Joost Pauwaert
BIO | SELECTED WORKS | CV
Joost Pauwaert (1985, Bretzenheim, DE) ’s work explores the relationship between power, beauty, and poetry, often infused with a playful, childlike curiosity. He integrates familiar and symbolic imagery that evokes both recognition and tension. Pauwaert is drawn to the aesthetic of the imposing and the monumental, balancing this with a sense of the caricatural and symbolic wonder that softens its intensity and opens up imaginative possibilities.
Joost Pauwaert works and lives in Wilrijk, BE. In the past years his works have been exhibited in numerous exhibitions during several gallery group and solo exhibitions at BARBÉ and other venues such at Ooidonk Art Festival, C-MINE in Genk, Art Brussels w/ Dauwens & Beernaert, Art Cologne w/ Galerie Eric Mouchet (FR), Archipel at Deweer Gallery Estate (Otegem), Art Rotterdam w/ BARBÉ, Ponti gallery (Antwerp), Pizza gallery (Antwerp), Gevaertsdreef (Oudenaarde), PASS kunstroute (Lede) and Emergent in Veurne. After his 2nd solo ‘The End Is Near’ in 2024 accompanied by the performance ‘Apocalyptic Triumph Parade' one of the sculptures was acquired by Museum of Deinze en De Leiestreek. He also participated in the debut exhibition of ABBY the contemporary museum in Kortrijk (BE) and in September 2025 he will hold a performance at the museum.
Exhibition view ‘The End Is Near’ by Joost Pauwaert, 1st room of the location at Penitentenstraat 29, Gent. Photo by Shivadas De Schrijver
Watch Joost Pauwaert’s performance ‘A new study for an end of the world’ - Homage to Jean Tinguely.
The performance was executed on Sunday August 14th 2022 at 21.00 in front of an audience in Beernem, Belgium.
The artistic beauty of these ventures derives from the originality of the questions, on the opposite side of the usual forms of artistic expression.
Actually, they precede and take us back to times when science and art were closer to each other than today. Or they lead us back to fundamental questions in sculpture, which always had to do with gravity and density.
Here we come closer to a fundamental poetry, which stems from the beauty of things themselves.
(text by Hans Theys)