Artwork in enamel | Johan De Wilde

Title: Pi - Futur Simple, Simple Past
Format: A4
Print run: 30 signed copies
Exhibition: The work is still on display until about mid-September at SMAK (ask at the front desk).

This artwork is the visual representation of the beginning of the number Pi, a series that has played a central role in Johan De Wilde's oeuvre for many years. The SMAK owns an extensive collection of these.

The edition will be launched along with the new book Hands of Time, Les très riches heures de Jean le Sauvage (publication date: mid-December 2025), the fourth volume in a series focusing on this artwork.

Concept and inspiration

Johan De Wilde assigned each decimal of Pi a specific size and color. The resulting shapes are arranged in a composition, using ten colors, inspired by an ordinary sunset. The dark horizontal line symbolizes the comma.

This series reflects our fascination with infinity, a concept we find difficult to imagine concretely and which is expressed through mathematical abstractions. The sunset acts as a metaphor: an endless and recurring phenomenon that touches everyone, while symbolizing the eternal search and human experience.

Johan makes his drawings with thousands of horizontal and vertical pencil lines, a technique that is substantively consistent with the abstraction of the subject.