To disappear with a Trace une vie d’artiste : A way of Life, from Jean Claude Wouters to Johannes Wouters

La Vie d’un Artiste, To Disappear with a Trace unfolds as a constructed notebook rather than a conventional monograph. Initiated through a message from Jean Claude Wouters to Tokyo-based journalist and curator Watashino Kage. The publication gathers archival materials, documents, and images into an open-ended constellation — one that may stimulate both the spirit and the body of an art student, as well as the art connoisseur. Its design remains minimal and effortless, with elements assembled loosely and intuitively, allowing meaning to emerge through every possible combination.

As an artist of restraint and sobriety, Jean Claude Wouters evolves toward increasing discretion in his expressions. With this in mind, the central theme of the book is established: a journey from physicality to the utmost lightness. He began as a ballet dancer and moved across multiple forms — painting, filmmaking, and photography — continually pushing their boundaries, to the point of producing photographic portraits that are barely perceptible and practicing painting at its limits, almost without paint. His late activity being a performance/class, “The Practice – je suis allé m’ébattre à l’origine de toute chose”, in his own words: “At last, maybe, I touch the non-physicality of the art piece, and if there is art in the process, it lives in what the participants take away.”

Text in English and Japanese.