Born in Guelma, Algeria (1975). Eric Van Hove was educated in Cameroon, Belgium and Japan, studying Contemporary art (BA, E.R.G./Brussels), Traditional Japanese Calligraphy (MA, Gakugei University/Tokyo) and is currently a PhD candidates at the Tokyo Geidai University of Fine Arts and Music. He has been based in Tokyo, Japan since 2001; an "equidistant place" as he puts it, from where he has exhibited internationally.
Inspired by a deep sense of wanderlust and the experience of foreignness, Van Hove questions the three modes of persuasion (ethos, pathos and logos) of western contemporary art, once brought to the “audiences of the border.” If he defines his work as “poetic” it has recently been advanced by some that while pondering on aspects of globalisation it inscribes in the current of Fantastic Art. Van Hove reflects on cultural identity and nomadism, whereas his insubstantial and often metaphoric interventions often question in a discursive way sociological, political and ecological issues. Having made displacement his studio, he is in perpetual movement ; recent residencies include Location One (Manhattan), Darat al Funun/UNESCO (Jordan), Kolin Ryynänen (Karelia/Finland), MIDBAR (Mitzpe Ramon/Israel), Paradise Art Center (Tehran/Iran), Sharjah Art Museum (United Arab Emirates), Lijiang Studio (China), while that same year he lectured in ten countries including the West Bank.
1: To our dead - three putting in situation of a text of Aimé Césaire in the slaughterhouse of Tambacounda, Senegal, 2005 (Installation)
2: Abreaction - cathartic installation with white chalk, Estgah Shekam, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran, 2006 (Performance)
3: Metragram on a Betsileo woman - village of Isorana, region of High Matsiatra, Fianarantsoa province, Republic of Madagascar, 2007 (Photography)