Cloned goats and dogs radiate red and yellow. Folds of dresses in mauve, mint-green and pink suggest movement and exhibit a fanciful frivolity. Sweetlove thrives on the superficial, placing it in razor-sharp contrast to the sententious. Through a number of variations on the same theme he creates friction between the artificial and the substantial, completely obliterating the boundaries between toy and work of art in certain of his works. His is a world in which poodles, giraffes and penguins are rendered into artefacts which unite dadaism, surrealism and pop art in a common post-modernistic synthesis. William Sweetlove was born in 1949 in Ostende, Belgium. Since 2003 he has been a member of the artists’ collective “The Cracking Art Group” in northern Italy. As the physical medium that provides the basis for their works of art, the members use a type of plastic produced via a thermo-chemical reaction in crude oil. This reaction, known as “cracking” is also the origin of the group’s name. In their manifesto the Cracking Art Group call upon their members to spread a vision of the world suffused with elements of irony and ecological awareness.To those, Sweetlove adds the conviction that art must also be an antidote to overconsumption and overproduction. His paintings, sculptures and assemblages are his impressions of existence reproduced in materials such as polyester, animal hides and textiles. William Sweetlove shapes his own world.

Johan Persson – August 22, 2006

Works:

Brochure