Born in Mexico in 1982, Ilan Weiss moved to Brussels in 2006 where he started a brief career as a fashion photographer and photo-engraver.

His artistic path as a photographer began a few years later, in 2013, when the Center for Contemporary Photography in Brussels chose to exhibit his personal photographic work. Other exhibitions followed in various places in Belgium, as well as at the Arles Festival in a selection for the screenings at Voies Off.

In 2016 Ilan Weiss developed a unique printing technique that brings photographic prints to pictorial renderings. He also used different techniques and specific actions to create volumes and textures.

Ilan Weiss created PINGUIN in 2018, an art space in Brussels where he exhibits artists practicing multidisciplinary approaches. His attention is focused on innovative methods, where the image is explored in all its aspects, even the most unexpected ones.

He is teaching at the ESA Saint-Luc School of Art in Brussels.

Artistic approach

His practice as a photographer has led Ilan Weiss to experiments aimed at giving shape to digital images. At first, he seeks to capture poetic moments, then he amplifies plastic qualities of the images to restore their liveliness and concreteness.

Manipulating the printing process in a specific way, Ilan Weiss makes use of the various materials to print on, as well as of the many possibilities of processing images in order to turn them into pictorial objects. He obtains various shapes, textures, reflections, changing their aspect depending on the angle from which we look at them so as to blur the boundaries between photography and painting.

Sometimes he even takes into account particular scents to make the process unique. Ilan Weiss uses his photographs to create paintings, sculptures and installations.