Yasmine Willems works in the sovereign silence of her studio where study, direct observation and her highly sensitive sense find expression in an intuitive body of work that unlocks an empathic space, and which therefore touches us, sometimes deep into the soul.
Titled ‘Rubato’ Yasmine Willems second solo show at (Shoo’bil)Gallery refers to a musical recitation cue with the intention of temporarily ignoring strict tempo, freer phrasing with the goal of increasing the expressive eloquence of a piece of music, also called ‘Tempo rubato’: Italian for ‘stolen time'
In an alternately smooth and expressively-impasto painted collage, Yasmine arranges her images in a woven nexus of sublime patterns and structures; abstract analyses in which Willems orders a concentrated tension between representation and imagination with much 'Rubato'.
Pictorial thinking is Yasmine's way of translating the world around her through her personal iconography, in which she frames basic symbols in an almost elevated way with an extended consideration of the nature of figurative representation in her work.
Carrying feeling as well as thought, Yasmine Willems values the pursuit of a meaningful and ‘resonant’ relationship with the other and things around her. This quest for resonance translates into open, playful and emotional paintings that counters the image of the world in times of a technologically controlled overweight.
A diagnosis that superbly counteracts contemporary conventional thinking.

Artists: Yasmine Willems