26 february 2026, Yves Joris
Paper is my travel companion: Ilse Pierard at Coppejans Gallery
The road to her studio winds between fields that have nothing to prove. No romantic backdrop, no clouds imposing themselves like baroque stage wings. Only serenity and space. The kind of space where thoughts slow down and sentences sound less explicit.
Inside, there is paper. Lots of paper. Stacked, found, preserved. Some sheets carry traces of a previous life: folds, discolouration, a slight tear not repaired but integrated into a work. Others appear barely touched, as if still uncertain whether they want to become art.
In the studio, we sit opposite one another. Ilse Pierard and beside her, Stephan Oomen, partner and curator. The conversation that follows resists rigid questions and answers. It moves as her work moves: searching, probing, reducing.
The reason for the interview is Paperworks, her first solo exhibition at Coppejans Gallery in Antwerp. A title that does not hide behind metaphors nor a programmatic promise. Simply work on paper. Less is more.
Ilse Pierard, CELL51225, 2025, Coppejans Gallery
Who is Ilse Pierard for those not yet familiar with her work?
She smiles. "That remains a difficult question. I am an artist. But getting to this point has not been a straight line. I graduated with a Master's in Visual Arts from Sint-Lukas Brussels. This was followed by a period with applied graphics and web design, the early internet, advertising, conceptual campaigns. Creative, fast, efficient and … well paid.
"In my heart, I felt there was always an artistic seed present," she confides. "But you grow up with the idea that you need to do something to earn a living, that art is something for later or on the side."
That 'later' did not arrive until 2016. "That was when I felt I had to return to my essence, to that inner necessity, to what drives me and why I create. I wanted not only to make images, but to make something meaningful. For two or three years, I searched for my own visual language. I doubted, discarded, started over again and again."
During the conversation, one sentence lingers: "Paper is my travel companion."
What do you mean by that?
"For me, creation is not an intellectual process," she says. "I try to switch off my mind. It is an exercise, a desire to enter another layer of time, a flow. Paper is not a neutral material within that, but already has meaning." She rarely works with pristine and perfect shop-bought paper, but most often with found sheets, carriers with a past.
"The paper may have hung somewhere or wrapped something. It has endured time. So, I do not start with a blank page. I enter into dialogue with it."
So, is paper subject or medium?
"Both. But it is certainly not a substrate. It is the work." Whereas in art history, paper often functioned as support — preliminary study, sketch, something provisional — she reverses that hierarchy. The paper is not preparation for something larger, but is the destination itself.
Stephan comments, "Ilse does not treat paper as something to be protected, but as a fully fledged material. It may tear, bend, react. The work appears fragile, yet it is precisely in that vulnerability where its strength lies."
Ilse Pierard, CELL281261, 2026, Coppejans Gallery
The cell as archetype
Oval forms hang on the studio wall. No perfect circles, no mathematical clarity, a shape that feels organic, almost biological.
How did you arrive at this form?
"I began removing everything that did not resonate," Ilse says. "Everything that was overthought. Everything I knew." "At first, there was far more movement. Rotation. Complexity. But I kept returning to that one form. The cell." She deliberately avoids calling it a circle.
"A circle is too perfect. What interests me is the slight ripple. The gentle irregularity. That is where life resides."
Stephan leans forward. "That dance between tension and balance is essential. The form wants to grow, yet is bounded by the frame. That tension makes the work active. There is no need for spectacle, no superfluous expressive outburst, but rather emptiness as active space. The cell becomes a field within which the eye may wander. Nothing is imposed. The strength lies not in the gesture, but in restraint."
Production and destruction
I hear that you work quickly?
She laughs. "Sometimes I make three or four works in a single day. But speed does not mean that everything remains. The work enters an incubation period. It hangs here. For days. Weeks. I look and feel. If the field of tension no longer resonates, I get rid of it."
That sounds ruthless.
"Perhaps. But I cannot keep something out of sentiment. If it does not live, it must go."
Stephan nods. "We test the work. Does it remain true to its nature? What remains must continue to sustain itself."
This attitude is reflected in Paperworks. What hangs in the gallery is not the result of linear production, but of careful and precise selection. What you see here has survived both creation and destruction.
Ilse Pierard, CELL112252, 2025, Coppejans Gallery
Coppejans: room for reduction
The step towards Coppejans Gallery was no coincidence.
"I was invited twice by Helma Vlemmings, curator and founder of ICOON," Ilse explains. "She became a kind of mentor. Together we asked, what is a good gallery for me? I made a list. Coppejans was on it."
Why?
"Because I sensed a sense of space there. No spectacle, no excess, trust. And because my work evolves from research. That is in the gallery's DNA."
In Antwerp, Paperworks has a sober, almost contemplative presentation. No explanatory texts placing the work within a theoretical framework, no grand statements on the wall.
Why such a functional title?
"Paperworks simply states what it is. Work on paper. I want the work to exist before it has to mean something. There are no titles, only a date. This is deliberate. I do not want to impose a narrative or a direction. Only time."
What do you expect from visitors?
She answers without hesitation: "Stop. Look and listen. Be present." It sounds simple, yet in a time when images receive only seconds of attention, it is almost radical.
"Perhaps a work brings you closer to yourself," she says. "Perhaps not. But it asks that you slow down."
I understand what she means. In the studio, this becomes tangible. The oval forms seem to breathe. The paper, layered and sometimes slightly lifted from the background, casts a shadow that shifts with the light. There is no spectacle, only concentration. At the end of our conversation, I return to the essence.
What remains when you remove everything?
She looks briefly at a work hanging against the wall. "Essence," she says softly. "That is my entire research. Removing everything that is unnecessary. Until only that which speaks remains."
Outside, light drifts across the fields. Inside, the cells hang, bounded yet open. Fragile, but not weak. Each work a snapshot of an encounter between hand and material.
At Coppejans Gallery, they are given room to breathe. No heroics. No monumental ambition. Only paper refusing to serve as a support for something else. Paper as a travel companion. Paper as memory. Paper as an exercise in reduction.
Perhaps that is what Paperworks ultimately does: it reminds us that art does not always need to expand. Sometimes it has to contract. Until it is precisely large enough to be present.
Ilse Pierard, Paperworks, Coppejans Gallery
