Last Saturday May 18,
Steven Humblet was our guest in the exhibition Mater, Deraedt & Fliervoet.
His interest in photography and opinions about the medium made his lecture
quite playful and discursive at the same time.
Photography is a medium
without identity, without handwriting, unlike painting or sculpting, which are
only about identity. Therefore photography has to make alliances with science,
publicity, architecture to have an ambition. Everyone who is using the medium
photography has to find out what to do with it, where to focus on, when to push
the button.
Sara Deraedt focuses in a
series of photos of the vacuum cleaner. These are close-ups and made with the
flash so that space and attraction are lost. The photos are hung in a way they
don’t interact with each other. The creepy photos of vacuum cleaners are
pushing the spectator away, and the space with some interventions like a
curtain and light bulb is getting the attention. The biggest wall in the
exhibition space is left empty, it is exhibiting itself. Steven Humblet
mentioned Baudrillard as a reference to this kind of photography, which has to
do with alienation.
Then we descended the
stairs to look at the work of Katja Mater. Steven Humblet explained the
procedure of the making of the photos. It is quite inventive that the photos
are in opposition with what photos always do: freezing a certain moment in
time. The photos of Katja Mater are showing something that doesn’t exist
anymore. By multi-exposure of the negative in the camera it is not freezing
moments in time, it becomes a print of time. The five folded variations are
unique pieces of a complex treatment of a photo printed from a negative which
was four or five times exposed during the painting of an object. Steven liked
very much the experiment: the 3D painted object which doesn’t exist as on the
photo, that becomes 2D on the multi-exposed negative and the big print of it.
And becomes again 3D by folding the big print five times in a different way.
Object – photo – sculpture.
The sunflares of Maartje
Fliervoet do their work by being beautiful jewellery in beautiful transparent
boxes. The light spots, which usually is a photographic error and which are
octagonal like the diaphragm of the camera, are cut out from photos and used
for the 5 photograms in the exhibition. It is the combination of an optical and
chemical principle which come together in that beautiful, transparent jewellery
box. The most sensual photos in the exhibition.
