“The One–The Real”

A fascination with the form of portraits underlies this exhibition composed around the work of Tom Callemin. His video Portrait #4, 2015, shows the face of a girl who stares without ever blinking, while Portrait #2, 2013, is a slow-motion recording of the face of a woman having an orgasm. In both cases we get to see expressions that, in daily life, usually cannot be observed with such minute attention. In Callemin’s photographs taken at night, the camera acts as an enhanced eye. Its flash is the only light source that makes the various subjects—such as a tree, a dark hole in the grass, or a naked woman posing on a pedestal—briefly visible.

The artist’s work is shown together with that of photographers Paul Kooiker and Dirk Braeckman, along with sculptor Thomas Lehnerer. A series of digital prints by Kooiker titled “Black Meat,” 2008, is the result of a close survey of swans and their movements. In some of the prints the animals are recognizable, while others are so closely cropped that the images don’t allow one to trace back to the original subject, instead splitting up into various abstract possibilities. Braeckman’s silver-gelatin prints have a painterly look, resembling carefully constructed compositions of light rather then traditional pictorial photography. Similarly, the untitled and undated bronzes by Lehnerer, each no bigger than the scale of a human hand, are modest and free-form approximations of figures. A mistrust of the representational traditions of their respective disciplines seems to inspire the work of all the participating artists, making the show unfold as a creative response to the restrictions specific to their mediums.