Walter Dermul V. 2

Walter Dermul is a figurative and interior painter who has exhibited in Belgium. Notable exhibitions at galleries in the Antwerp and Brussels metropolitan areas include Gallery Martin Van Blerk, Elise Ka Gallery, Gallery Artisjo, Lions Club, and De witte merel villa. He has been featured in Saatchi Art collections and Walter describes his art as revolving around “themes of nostalgia, communication, and emotional resonance…I focus on subtle emotional cues — a fleeting glance, a moment of contemplation, or an unspoken tension. These small gestures often convey more than words ever could”.

With a sense of retro aesthetics as well as mood, Walter Dermul invents his painted scenes from his own photography as well as vintage photographs he finds, such as from old family albums. He constructs these references into scenery which invoke solace, solitude, and tension. Walter’s figurative works tend to portray people behaving unusually with interiors or architecture, such as a couple of strangers passing each other by on an empty street, a man and woman gazing into each other’s eyes with their hand behind their back, or a woman staring out a window. These solemn interactions against modernist, vintage architecture along with the dated hairstyle and clothing from the mid-20th century creates dramatic theatre reminiscent of retro films from the 1940s. 50s, and 60s. 

In older black and white films, directors tended to portray scenes with strategic lighting and shadow, elongated pauses between dialogue to create a sense of tension as well as body language which reveals the mood of the story. Walter incorporates these classic film techniques into his paintings as his characters convey a narrative about human psychology. Even the interiors portrayed by themselves seem to have a story to tell, as they bask in theatrical shadow contemplating the entry of a dark, mysterious figure. The paintings can be described as intuitive to identity amongst the pale, cold, geometric modernist interiors detached from other actors in the compositions. In a sense, the works are a metaphor for the distance between individuals society has created as technology has advanced through the decades. Walter’s works could be described as a foreshadowing of future events using retro characters, settings, and imagery. 

Tracing Time (pictured above) depicts a strange man crouching and studying the staircase, as if he has never seen one before. Perhaps the figure could be sneaking and listening to a conversation on the lower stair level? Tracing Time reflects Walter’s fascination with portraying human psychology through body language. The unusual behavior reveals a tendency which could be described as illogical, mysterious, dramatic, or even mischievous. 

Walter Dermul creates a realm in which retro characters and interiors enact dramatic scenes with focused compositions drenched in pale or blue light. There remains a mist in the atmosphere and his color palette reveals a sense of mystery and undertone of tension. These dramatic scenes portray a world where interactions are cold, distant, ominous, and interiors convey their isolating structure through methodical staircases drenched in shadow or an open window revealing the pale moonlight. With a sense of recreating historical narratives through vintage attire, hairstyles, and architecture as well as conveying contemporary notions of defining individual identity, Walter Dermul conducts presentations on human psychology and the purpose of individual identity amongst the backdrop of the noisy outside world. His characters feel encapsulated in their environments and interiors, shielding them from the chaos of contemporary society and rapidly evolving times which do not always lead to progress.

https://walterdermul.be