Twin sister of Martn Coppens, first name derived from Christel, first girlfriend of WTE (1976).

Christl Coppens (°1986, Ghent, Belgium) creates videos and mixed media artworks. With a conceptual approach, Coppens tries to reach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way. Her work doesn’t reference recognisable forms. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. She wants to include the viewer out of the sometimes intense personal moments in a very physical way. Her Art uses everyday experiences as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. 

By scrambling the image on a pixel level to create puzzlement, she denies the viewer access to the original idea but uses sources and ideas that are integrated into the process of the composition.  They may escape those who do not take the time to explore her works which are carefully self-referential, yet no less aesthetically pleasing. She often creates hundreds practically identical images in a day, still her works remain dramatically beautiful.

With her twin brother Martn Coppens she works on a long-term performance project: " Pleasure Concentrate vs Pain Diluted ", where they investigate the human ability to face extreme stimuli in its diverse forms. Christl Coppens currently lives and works in Ghent.

After Saint Martin of Tours, patron of fragmentarists. During student years in Ghent (1979-1983) VA was heavily interested in the cut up techniques by Brion Gysin, and William Burroughs.

Martn Coppens (° Ghent, Belgium) studied “composition” at University College Ghent, Faculty of Music. He joined Various Artists together with his twin sister Christl Coppens in 2004. They are both so called fragmentarists, decomposing pictures, text, or sound into fragments to recompose the same fragments into a new whole. Coppens creates soundtracks and mixed media artworks. By experimenting with aleatoric processes, Coppens uses references and ideas that are fragmented but still integrated into the process of the composition. His soundtracks feature coincidental, and accidental connections. Inspired by the Cut-up techniques of Brion Gysin, and William S. Burroughs, he creates complex, highly subjective and unfiltered compositions. They reference to worlds of concentrated feelings on the one hand and that of diluted emotions at the other.