For Renaissance’s second show, which opens on October 25th at the gallery’s Antwerp space Schönfeld Projects, Willems is showcasing his collage-based work alongside sculptures and photograms by Babs Decruyenaere, a Belgian artist who shares Willems’ affinity for using found, discarded materials. The dialogue between the two artists allows visitors to discover affinities between their work, both conceptually and visually, while on a subliminal level it conveys a message of hope based on the concept of rebirth that underpins their practice.

Whereas Decruyenaere explores the rich potential of humble stones, Willems is interested in the possibilities of discarded pieces of paper which he uses to create graphical collages based on the modernist language of geometric abstraction. The artist’s fascination with found paper can be traced to a collection of 800 vintage National Geographic magazines that his grandparents left him. Drawn to the 1950s photographs he discovered therein, he started scanning them, and looking for tiny abstractions which he then used to create collages. His recent work is based on items he finds in flea markets such as old photo albums whose coloured pages imbue some of his collages with vibrant accents.  That’s not to say his monochromatic or muted-coloured pieces, often made with white paper sheets that have turned yellow, lack vigour, on the contrary, their toned-down chromatics belie bold graphic gestures and tactile playfulness.

What is captivating in examining the two artists’ work side by side is how similar they are in their fine-tuned abstraction and lyrical minimalism despite the differentiation in source materials. What seems, at first glance, to be abstract compositions actually belie figurative associations that trigger the imagination. In combination with the discarded materials that they are made of, in effect both artists’ work explores the boundaries between the figurative and the abstract in the context of everyday life, and highlights the beauty of the overlooked.