Wilting Flower

Daan Gielis grew up with plants – his mother is a florist and his father a landscape architect – and was captivated by their temporality. Wilting Flower brings together the spectacular beauty and the anticipation of its end. Glowing light of the neon, at each exposition embedded in a different space, enters in a dialogue with the context. On what does it shed light?

Wilting Flower, resembling a childish, cartoon-like drawing of a flower, becomes a universal sign. In its simplicity and poetic radiation, it lets the reflection about oppositions entangled with each other: life and death, nature and culture, melancholy and innocent joy unfold. 

‘Gielis had to embrace that temporarality himself. From an early age he was plagued by a serious autoimmune disease. It made him vulnerable and confronted him with transience. But it also fueled his will to live, it gave him the strength to fight the battle with his illness again and again.’

- Bram Ieven