Elise Willems
Elise Willems (°1993, Aalst, Belgium) lives and works in Antwerp.
After studying Architecture at LUCA School of Arts, Elise obtained a Master's degree in Fine Arts at Sint-Lucas Antwerp. This combination of technical precision and artistic freedom forms the backbone of her multidisciplinary practice.
Willems moves between painting, digital media, installation, and material experimentation. Her work is driven by a fascination with the interplay between virtual and physical realities. She explores how digital visual languages—often generated through 3D modeling or rendering—can be translated into analog techniques, and how this translation gives rise to a new, hybrid world.
Her images are composed of fragments of digital environments, in which natural forms are deconstructed into sculptural objects devoid of fixed meaning. By navigating virtual spaces in search of compelling compositions, she selects moments that are then reconstructed in the physical world using traditional techniques. The resulting works hover between recognition and estrangement, between reality and simulation.
What begins as a digital render often ends as a tangible object, painting, or something in between. This constant dialogue between the material and the virtual lies at the heart of her practice. She deliberately explores the boundaries between disciplines and is continuously searching for new materials, media, and their combinations.
This experimental approach is part of a broader inquiry into the contrast and convergence between traditional craftsmanship and analog techniques on the one hand, and contemporary digital technologies on the other. Her work raises questions about how we experience reality in a world where the virtual and the physical are increasingly intertwined.
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