Raymond Gorissen/ Silenced

Raymond Gorissen is a Belgian contemporary artist whose practice centers on three-dimensional assemblages and conceptual installations. Trained in painting, his work has evolved from canvas compositions into tactical arrangements of everyday objects, historical items, and industrial signage. Through these materials, he examines universal themes of politics, history, and individual freedom.

‘’After more than four years of war, international attention for Ukraine is waning at an alarming rate. Driven by family ties and a deep aversion to the authoritarian regime, he refuses to look away. His art is not a medium for abstract interpretation; it confronts the viewer, unfiltered, with the facts of this human catastrophe.

Where many artists seek hope, he consciously chooses to depict hatred and rage. For him, hope is a passive emotion that rarely prompts change; it waits for a deus ex machina. Rage, on the other hand, is an evolutionary survival mechanism. Unlike fear or disgust - which force us to flee or turn away - rage drives us toward the source. It provides the strength to confront and fight.

His series War and Peace translates the collective rage of the Ukrainian people, and his own, into images. He does not seek to comfort, but to activate, bringing about the tangible change that passive hope never will. These pieces belong to a larger, ongoing cycle of work examining authoritarian imagery, state propaganda, the memory of destruction, and the chilling relationship between mass culture and political violence.’’

The Comfort of Silence

The Comfort of Silence is a visual critique of contemporary Russian civil society under the current political regime. The artwork assembles a dense, multi-tiered crowd of traditional Matryoshka dolls, clustered together to evoke the collective uniformity of a state-aligned mass. While these wooden figures traditionally symbolize family, continuity, and cultural pride, this installation strips away their warmth. Every doll - from the towering figures in the back to the smallest forms in the front - has its mouth sealed shut with a medical plaster. This intervention transforms a beloved folk symbol into a quiet monument of complicity. The piece serves as a political statement on the transactional nature of silence within the Putin regime. It illustrates a society that willingly trades its voice and moral agency for state-provided security and personal comfort. By keeping their mouths shut, the figures symbolize a collective endorsement of state actions, including the devastating war in Ukraine. The installation suggests that this widespread compliance remains unshakeable until the veneer of personal luxury and daily comfort is directly threatened. Until that tipping point, the plaster remains firmly in place - a visual anchor of passive agreement, willful ignorance, and systemic silence.