My work comes from the idea that art should talk about life. It takes a lifetime to know it all and it’s not necessarily enough. Life is simple whereas living is complex. Everything can be seen antithetically. In this dialectic I put my works as an element of synthesis: representing simply but with a complex technique what surrounds me, I explore my personal reality (as the only one I can experience) as a means to reflect on society and human condition. In an age of profound banality, in which we constantly expose every (true or fake) moment of our lives, what we do or what we have, I turned paper into my own social network.

What I generally want to assert or tell, however, is something that is not obvious or even not present but nevertheless concrete and sensible. My works rest on two levels of interpretation (representation and meaning) often distant from each other. I am as much a realist as I am a surrealist, I am as much a “Flemish” as I am uninterested in reality. I like to reproduce it as a pretext, not for what it is, but for the meaning (surreal, allusive, formal, allegorical, symbolic, other) that I can attribute to it. The leitmotif of this shift is often an ironic play on words, quotes, resemblances or forms. The title, making explicit (or alluding to) the meaning, is an integral part of the work, almost the work itself more than the tangible product.

With a view to the stratification of meanings, I chose the name Vano, the final “particle” of my surname, for its meanings in my native language. Vano means worthless, like my subjects, which often appear frivolous, banal and useless. At the same time, they are vain in the sense of being disembodied. The representation of an object is not the object itself (Ceci n’est pas une pipe.): the realist technique conceals the immateriality of the subjects, restoring their illusion. However, the term vano also refers to an empty environment or space to be used, to be filled with whatever is useful or pleasing to us.

My vain works become containers to be filled with meanings, concepts, reflections.