LUC GIJBELS

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The life of Luc Gijbels from Heusden-Zolder (Belgium) reads smoothly: more than 12 years of success as business manager/creative director of a few advertising agencies of his own. But then suddenly, at only 32, he chose to spend a year as an artist hermit in Portugal, focussing on tons of writing and some painting. With no money, no bank cards and all bank accounts blocked. For more than a year, he solely lived on the earnings from the artwork he created.  

 

Once back home, he started his own fashion production house. Because fashion, among a number of other creative pursuits, is a great love. He doesn't let the new business grow over his head and keeps the number of employees within limits this time. Now he has the freedom to combine. Among other things, Luc decides to spend three months living among 200 children in South Africa. Writing, photographing, playing and imagining. To tell the first story using his white ball of wool. The result is two art books, each weighing 2.8 kilograms. In the first book 'Life', he worked with both black and white and color photographs of the children and people around them. The white thread is always 'the red thread'. The pictures speak their own powerful language. Gijbels himself tells his story of how he - I - makes more and more connections with people and in this way amasses a valuable life. 

 

The second book, 'Memory', focuses on 200 expressive portrait artworks that he made one by one with the children. Hidden playful life wisdom makes us reflect on our own lives. The second part is at the same time a reference to the first-person who still wanted to say so much to the people around him, but his life's ball of wool turned out to have been unrolled too quickly. The art story was given the name 'A Little Glow in the Dark' and is part of Gijbels' larger art project 'The World White Wool Project', in which he keeps making us reflect on our own lives through his white ball of wool.