The first monographic volume on the graphic work of Belgian artist Petrus De Man.
This book is produced in close collaboration with the artist and focuses on a period of the last 30 years. Petrus De Man was once a pupil of artist Dan Van Severen and has had numerous exhibitions since then. In an in-depth interview with Ory Dessau, he tells the story of his life, which forms the core of this book. In addition, other authors also take the floor and talk about their take on the work. But the image also claims its rights and narrates an extensive and thoughtful discourse. The book owes its intriguing title to the English word ajar—ajar, half-open—and actually reveals the sources of the oeuvre and of its creation.
Petrus De Man (born 1955 in Hallen, Belgium) is known as a painter and illustrator for creating a particularly poetic universe with raw, constructed and often very colourful accents. Child-males, prisoners of their fate but also possessed of an urge for freedom, seek a place within the confines of walls and enchanted gardens, between melancholy and mischievousness, in a world created to their measure. Hesitating between existential buck-passing and a sometimes petrified silence, De Man's world evolves along with the oeuvre, which can be seen as an eternal building site.
