Wim Wauman is a multifaceted visual artist, art educator, artistic researcher and writer. He studied photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Antwerp and the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Gent (HISK), and has been exhibiting his works since 2000. He is currently concluding a PhD-research project in visual arts on the apparent opposition between ‘making’ and ‘thinking’ entitled Making Waves: A Play with Arts and Crafts.

About ten years ago, Wauman began photographing still life compositions, often inspired by an enigmatic and challenging concept or narrative. His photographs can be found in several museums and collections such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Fotomuseum in Antwerp. He has published four books of his works and curatorial projects: Paraphernalia (2013), False Friends (2015), WORK FLOW / A Play with Arts Apes and Crafts (2018) and Blauwhaus Getijdenboek/Book of Tides (October 2019).

Today, his artistic work comprises customized furniture pieces and cabinets, geometric ‘intarsia’ compositions (meticulously composed from fine wood veneer), photography and larger installations.

The photographic work of Wim Wauman comes from a simple and deep astonishment of still lives, as they are. There is, in his images, a subtle game of pictorial conventions and photographic traditions.

The artistic quest of Wim Wauman is, as he says, inspired by the alchemist’s attempt to produce gold: a metaphor for creating something durable and valuable. This idea of the process of transformation lies at the heart of his artistic practice.  

As a playful creator, he composes visual puzzles - images or installations - charged with wayward interpretations and subtle contradictions. Through an intuitive, visual and reflective process, he tries to fully use and increase different skills. Each artwork offers a challenge and is seen as an exercise of intellectual and artistic craftsmanship.

In the theatre of practice, where making is connecting, every certainty is turned into a question. Material is not known for what it is, but by what it does, specifically when mixed with other materials, treated in particular ways, or placed in specific situations.