San Francisco’s Highlight Gallery presents a solo exhibition of Filip Dujardin.
In his new series of photomontages, Filip Dujardin pursues his mission of building an architectural augmented reality, the seamlessness between real and digital provoking a wonder about what is, what could have been and, perhaps, what should be. (dis)location is composed of two bodies of work. The first series, “D’ville”, was photographed in the French coastal town of Deauville for the Photo Festival where Filip Dujardin was invited to establish a correspondence between his universe and Deauville. The second series, “Guimaraes : Transgenic Landscape”, was photographed in Guimaraes for the 2012 European Capital of Culture. Dujardin was challenged to interpret the Guimarães area of northern Portugal through the cultural and architectural use of its landscapes, particularly in the light of a polarisation between city and rural populations.
“In both of these landscapes, a rich history plays out in textured layers across centuries of assembly and accumulation. At his hand, the cities, and their iconic architecture, are transformed in a dreamlike concerto of walls erected, planted and inserted, rooftops pitched and deployed, and windows obliterated from memory.
Dujardin sculpts space beyond the confines of an architectural reality. His manifestations negate gravity; they toy with the impossible, the improbable, and the absurd. The Belgian artist studied architecture history before turning his attention to photography in the nineties, yet his penchant for the built environment never subsided. Meticulously cataloguing images of buildings, urban space, and landscape, Dujardin has steadily amassed an inventory of photographic textures and gradients. It is from these collected elements that his fictional worlds begin. His constructions are ethereal, not physical, but the real coup is the eye’s deception – a painterly approach to light and shadow that tricks the mind into believing that the structured spaces could really exist.” –Joseph Becker.
Dujardin was born in Ghent, Belgium in 1971. He studied Art History at the University of Ghent with an emphasis in Architecture. He later studied Photography at the Academy of Ghent. He was a technical assistant to Magnum photographer, Carl de Keyzer and then collaborated with Frederik Vercruysse for six years.
