Studio accrochage, Nucleo Ghent 06 & 07/05/2023

Studio accrochage with works in progress to collect feedback during the Open Studio Days, May 2023. Works were selected to optimize quick to longer viewing, stressing combinations and repetitions within several series (photocopies, prints, graphite and charcoal drawings etc.). Oral feedback by strangers and acquaintancies led to possible implementation in consecutive working methodology. For example, the appearance of small partly cryptical or equivocal sentences (e.g., 'the best is to be forgotten' or 's/ces des(s/t)ins son(t) mort(s)') seem to help navigating the different image series presented. Also, a dialogue with Arnout De Cleene led me to the insight that since the object/thing which left a collected trace is absent, the trace itself is hard to transpose/interpret to another medium (due to the lack of its cause). E.g., translating a photocopied and enhanced smudge on a napkin to a charcoal drawing needs proper transformation, especially since it appeared as a trace in the first place, i.e., the mark of an absent cause. Because such a trace cannot function as a full-fledged sign (or motive), one has to create/formulate something sufficiently new departing from it; a proper interpretation from the mark on.

The following pictures show the build-up of a fragmented charcoal 'frieze' (try-out frottage) and several moments preceding and during the open studio accrochage on 06 & 07/05/2023. Most paintings and drawings shown in these photographs are the momentary result of a process of tracing and redrawing found traces and shapes from magazines, manipulated screenshots (e.g., a film by Ozon) and so on. The central artistic inquiry here could be formulated as follows: left without their cause, and stripped of their context of appearance, what kind of treatments can bring these traces (back) to (another) visual 'life', i.e., a form of aesthetic quality? Hence the continuation of methods and tactics revolving around resizing, découpage, montage, transmediation, decoloring, recoloring etc. (See also Seven Sins.)

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