He likes forgetting things. Where a picture was taken, what it was, the emotional circumstances of the shoot. As if to give them a new form of life, free from any past. What interests him is the image itself, and the story it contains. Dirk Braeckman, a major figure in the Flemish contemporary art scene, is like an amnesiac photographer who sometimes lets his negatives sit for years before developing them. “I need some distance from the subject of the image,” he says. “My photographs have neither title nor date. Sometimes I write down a code telling me where it what shot, but most of the time I forget what it means. I prefer to date the print, the real creation. I don’t want to influence the viewer to find a subject in the image. It should remain an enigma.”
Diane Dufour, director of LE BAL, is giving Braeckman his first major exhibition in France. “At first sight,” she writes, “Braeckman photographs in the simplest way. He doesn’t go out looking for remarkable subjects or places, but instead photographs his surroundings with 35mm, usually from head-on at eye level. His photographs, with little trace of narrative, are never a direct representation of reality. Braeckman distorts and sculpts everything he sees. And suddenly, nothing is what it seems. A bathroom tile, the corner of a bed, a patch of wallpaper: the most insignificant objects begin to vibrate, invading the space and becoming tactile. The satin in the sheet radiates, the formica on the coffee table rejoices.”
EXHIBITION
Dirk Braeckman
Through January 4th, 2015
Le BAL
6 Impasse de la Défense
75018 Paris
+33 1 44 70 75 50
http://www.le-bal.fr
