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Juan d’Oultremont is a multidisciplinary artist who acts as a performer, writer, painter, musician, photographer, cartoonist, radio producer and compulsive ‘collections collector’. After studying painting at the Brussels studio of Marthe Wéry, Thierry de Duve, and Pierre Carlier, he founded the Cissiste International- movement in 1975. He won the Prix de la jeune peinture Belge [Young Belgian Painting Award] in 1977 and was awarded the Brussels Literary Prize, Manneken Prix, in 2020 for authoring the novel Judas Côté Jardin [Judas at the Edge of the Garden], a novel about his childhood in the Brussels family garden between the 1950s and 1960s.

The French-speaking media has dubbed d’Outremont the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of contemporary art. His oeuvre as a whole centres on concepts like memory, recognition, authenticity versus counterfeits and – above all – the artist’s role and status in contemporary society. D’Oultremont has a frequent habit of sowing mayhem in the art world and among its participants. His method of choice is funny and/or devil-may-care interventions, e.g. 2020’s Tre()zor project, where he would leave a black-and-white photograph of a gold object at a cultural site every week, tempting passers-by to steal it. He collects record album covers that he retouches or repaints by hand, and, in the spirit of Fluxus, he also creates text collages and artist’s books seeded with zany, unorthodox humour. For example, he made a mock-up of his own obituary, replete with a signed and numbered statement printed with ‘Juan d’Oultremont est mort’. It emphasises his many lives and artistic diversity, which, according to him, centres on two main principles: ‘doing what nobody’s asked him to do, and showing up where he’s least expected’.

But aside from being an author and artist, he’s also an avid collector. However, D’Oultremont doesn’t limit himself to books, albums, or other tangible objects...he also collects conversations, happenings, and encounters. For instance, he collects conversations he’s had on the street or in a taxi in his notebooks. ‘Is being an artist heroic?’ the driver asks. He responds full of conviction: ‘It’s a struggle for the ones who really do it, no doubt, but the term art is so hackneyed now that we’ve even got polyester cows on display. People mistakenly think that anything out-of-the-ordinary is art.’

Having dubbed himself the collector of the ages, he also collects full collections. ‘For example, I collect toy soldiers, but only the dead or wounded ones. And I collect the names of tuberculosis patients and old manuals teaching the ropes of analogue photography. Keeping this many collections is slightly pathological, but there’s also a treasure-hunting aspect to it that reflects my desire to comprehend the world through the prism of a series.’

Humorously, tenderly, and with irony – Juan d’Oultremont shows us the reticent vulnerability of the fragile eruptions of the world around him.

HW