A selection of the paintings series, Anywhere Reloaded has been selected for Input/Output, a competition and exhibition in De Bond (Brugge) with Hallveig Agustsdottir, Charlotte De Groote, Peter De Meyer, Marie-Laure Delaby, Filip Gilissen, Phillip Henderickx, Oscar Hugal, Berten Jaekers, Jonas Marga, Matgorzata Maria Olchowska, Sven Overheul, Jasper Rigole, Yoko Tack, Stijn Van Acker, Sofie Van Der Linden en Tamara Van San.

The works will be presented from  October 17 – November 15, 2009.
Opening on Friday 16th of October!

De Bond
Buiten Smedenvest 1 -8000 Brugge

During the last Threeplusone residency and exhibition that took place in Zennestraat 17 (Brussels) this late summer, I presented an installation mixing flickering light and painting projection with the help of Arduino , Processing and a small LDR.

The aim of the residency was to create new site-specific works, directly inspired from this old laboratory, and connected with the idea of “extension”, coming from certain questions that we wanted to raise, such as: How to extend a media with another?, How to extend an image into a space?, How to extend a space into a media?

Starting from that, I chose one of the rooms available in Zennestraat 17: the one completely painted in black during the last exhibition, except for a white frame. This room was especially made to welcome a projection… and suited to one of the works I wanted to achieve: a hybrid installation where outside light interfere with the inner lights of the image. A complete auto-sufficient system that the public could only look at and not interact with.

From this process, results an empirical dialog between  two flickering phenomenons, a tensed experience with a constantly appearing/disappearing image, touching nearly the state of film, but remaining always a still, questioning ourselves on the reality of the space, the image and the experience that we are living.

A video documentation of the installation will come soon but here you can already find some pictures…

For Expanded-Scapes (Leopoldskazerne, Ghent, 2009), I have shown recent works on generic spaces. Using maps and construction sites as underlying ground-works of the generic template, I create improbable spaces where imaginary/virtual flows (traffic, circulation, communication, economic exchanges) are the only inhabitants.

More pictures from Expanded-Scapes here!
More from Generic there!

mural painting in my studio, Leopoldskazerne, Ghent, 2009
(work in progress)

From this Monday 5th of January until 27th February 09, some paintings of the anywhere reloaded project are exhibited in Nucleo’s office in Ghent. You can visit it during working hours from Monday till Friday.

Nucleo develops affordable, good quality studios in the city of Ghent and its surroundings for artists active in various art disciplines. I could rent a temporary studio from them this year, located in the beautiful Leopold Caserne.

contact: info@nucleo.be

Adress: Nucleo vzw
Lange Violettestraat 237-239
9000 Ghent, Belgium

photos: Kristina Ianatchkova

Here are some pictures of recent works in progress (they still need to be finished after being mounted on board).

After exploring and revealing specific qualities of the non-place self (heterogeneity, reflective surfaces, geometricity) by hollowing out the space of its recognizable elements, I try now to go deeper in the merge of  surfaces. I’d like to lead the image to a certain state of in-between, between something recognizable and something where all directions would have been erasing.

This week-end, Juan Duque and I opened the door of our new atelier in Ghent where we showed our work in progress and research materials on the topic of contemporary landscape. We presented both video works, Juan showed also drawings and an installation in the studio and I presented my photographic and painting works.

Here is a little text about Juan:
Architect and Urban Designer with studies in Media Art, Juan Duque works on the ‘visuality’ of the Landscape and the process of ‘decontextualization’, ‘alteration’ or migration of the images. Implementing different media, his work focuses on research on ‘extended’ landscapes resulting from digital or physical alterations and distortions.
http://www.betweencorners.blogspot.com

It was quite interesting to present different approaches of the contemporary landscape in general and I’m really curious to see how our collaboration will evolve. I’d like to experiment more things in my video work and to propose a collaborative screening on this topic.

Finally, even if I was missing some friendly faces, we could say that it was a success, lot of people and some good feedbacks. Long life to the OA!

ps: thanks to Hallveig G.K. Agustsdottir for the pictures!

Here are some pictures of the paintings presented in the entrance hall of Sint-Lukas, Brussels in June 08. For a detailed look on the paintings go to http://www.disconnectedmacha.be and click on “anywhere reloaded” to see the digital portfolio. There is also a printed portfolio available on request.

anywhere reloaded, pigment on paper, mounted on board, 148×111cm, 2007/08

Anywhere reloaded #04, painting on paper, 150×120cm, 2007

I’ve now a good series of painting material, but as an image is never experienced as a real situation and finally is only a strong personal interpretation of a space, I plan to prepare an intervention in it. I don’t know if I’ll get the authorisations for doing this at North Station Brussels, which belongs to SNCB, but it could actually be in any non-space. I need at least few equipment and access to electricity.

My idea is to fictionalise the space by use of lights and a certain “mise en scene” in order to allows individuals to perceive it differently. Once the gap created, the viewer becomes actor of the emptiness. He has to fill the time-space offered to him. This concept join what I developed with the “dis-connected project” where the emptiness available in the “helmets” allowed the users to dis-connect from their environment.

Again the ability of the spectator to experience something is only up to him. His openness to perception could create nothing or everything. But it brings me other questions, is it the person who sublimates the real or is it the real that sublimates his perception of appearances? It leads me to the notion of being “inhabit” (in french we say that an object or anything non human can be “habité”), it means that spaces could be alive and inhabit by their own soul. It could be natural, as mountains, or artificial spaces, as buildings, non-spaces.

In this research, I have noticed that it’s not necessarily me who is attracted by these spaces, but I have sometimes the impression that they call me, that they have their things to say to whom could be able to stop the flow and listen to them. Then, would those spaces be kind of monolith, making connections between the visible and the invisible? Between the surface where we walk and another level of reality?

Therefore the project of an intervention becomes more relevant. The paintings create an experience of a image, a vision of this concept of the monolith but would it be possible to make it experienced in real? Or would it remains a fantasy?

Some interesting books or articles:

O Altitudo!: An Interview with Robert Macfarlane, Brian Dillon, in Cabinet Magazine, The Mountains issue, 2007
Images, Perception and Stereotypes, Alia Rayyan, February 2006

Non-Lieux, introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité, Marc Augé, Seuil, 1992

Anywhere reloaded #03, painting on paper, 150×120cm, 2007

AR will be my main project during this year at Transmedia. I would like to develop further this research on the relationship between the objective status of our environment and the way we perceive it, this applied specifically to urban environment.

How do we fulfill this gap between us and the outside world? How could perception be translated and modulated by different media, according their own properties, in order to correspond to our own vision?
The relationship between us and our environement is not only managed by a functional aspect but also by the “affect” we develop in it. To understand this notion of affect and how it interfere, I started to translate my perception of urban spaces through photo, painting, video,…

I’m also interested by the ambiguity that could appears in this merging of media. The specificity of each one could be found in the different images and make them more complex.

But it’s first of all a certain atmosphere, a dis-connected time-space which can bring a certain idea of beauty in a fully factitious environment, that I’m looking for. How contemplation could emerge from artificiality?

In the environment where I move, there is no more question of natural landscapes but of ultra-functional urban space. Our brain adapt itself, try to generate visual pleasure and can create a sublimated vision of our environment. Thus a corridor, a waiting room, a staging area, a non-space can become contemplative, meaning generator.