L'art de Marcel Berlanger (°B, 1965) est un art de révélation, au sens photographique du terme. Il s'agit à la fois de livrer une image et d'en dévoiler l'origine picturale. Souvent perceptible au premier regard, le motif choisi n'est pas innocent ; il est le résultat d'une ensemble de préoccupations formelles et symboliques. Au delà de leurs qualités plastiques très spécifiques, les cyprès, thuyas, saules, chrysanthèmes, etc. sont porteurs de significations extrinsèques. Un cactus traversé d'un trait vert à la bombe, comme produit par un bombage; une vue au microscope d'une minerai d'uranium (Zeunérite), construction extrêmement rigoureuse du chaos et contribution belge à la première bombe atomique. Rien de gratuit donc : un ensemble de signes dont on pressent immédiatement les possibilités de maillage.
Formulée de la sorte, la peinture de Marcel Berlanger ne livre pas seulement le "quoi", elle révèle également le "comment" et induit immédiatement le "pourquoi".
L'image et son processus d'apparition son intimement liés et surtout ils sont montrés. L'appréhension des œuvres implique une durée et un mouvement. Si le motif se laisse cerner d'une premier regard distant, il se délite dès que l'on s'approche, pour livrer sans fard sa propre constitution : un réseau
construit de touches de peinture, posées sur une surface. C'est en ce sens que le motif apparaît par révélation, comme une épiphanie qu'épuiserait un blow up trop intense. Il n'y a rien derrière l'image que sa propre matière constitutive et son organisation sur le support. Motif, matière et manière sont irrémédiablement associés.
Pierre-Olivier Rollin,
Directeur de la collection de la province du Hainaut
(extrait du texte dans le catalogue 'One Eyed')
Marcel Berlanger uses procedures extensively. When creating - or should we rather say 'constructing' or 'performing' - a painting, he seems to follow step by step a program that is determined beforehand and directed centrally, for example in the making of the Fumées. Berlanger draws an orthogonal grid over a photograph of his subject and transposes this grid - blown up x times - onto the canvas, in order to colour the image square after square. What goes for the wisps of smoke - these apparently chaotic wisps are the result of a thoroughly disciplined and rational painting procedure - goes just as well for the marines. However 'wild' and 'natural' the sea may seem, the beholder who tends to be overwhelmed by romantic feelings, as if swept away by turbulent waters, should be warned in advance: below these surfaces, a similarly meticulously calculated, traced out grid is hidden.
Frank Maes, excerpt of the catalogue 'One Eyed'
Watching the landscapes by Rotterdam photographer Gerco de Ruijter (°NL, 1961) I am gliding above the earth. The dark cloudy line of the surf subtly merges with the soft sand curves. A line of dots is visible with crystal clarity: footsteps, ending in a persons long shadow. Gerco de Ruijter shoots from the sky but always with both feet on the ground. He chooses a good position, checks which way the wind is blowing and prepares to fly his kite with a camera attached to it. Controlled from the ground it takes pictures of creeks, soil patterns, meadows and tree plants.
I find Gerco de Ruijter´s landscapes so impressive. They fascinate me even more than the landscapes I see from an aeroplane. The framing and quadrangle format deprive us of all grip. There is no horizon for orientation and a quadrangle just does not have a top or bottom side. There are no points of reference, nothing to hold on to. The earth itself is reduced to a variety of textures; a dark area of craquelé contrasted with a soft, velvety green layer and spongy shapes. On closer inspection they turn out to be the sea, a meadow and some trees, photographed from the air, from a much lower position than that of a plane, some twenty metres above ground level.
Flos Wildschut
curator Dutch Photo Institute (NFI), Rotterdam
The paintings of Martijn Schuppers (°NL, 1967) redefine the concept of monochrome painting and open up new horizons in the processes of modern painting. In the specific field of process painting, he adds a new impetus through his characteristic and considered way of painting. His paintings appeal to a broad audience and encourage the discourse on the fundamental aspects of painting, exceeding the pure aesthetic experience. The suggestion of depth and the illusion of photography activate a discussion on perception as such.
"Take a photograph of a jungle, looking like a moonscape. Subtract everything that, say, The National Geographic would put in the image. Then, take out all elements that represent anything. Then - why not, since we are engaged in elimination - take out photography itself. What remains is what exceeds narrative as it has been dominated by realism, the one-to-one relationship between eye or camera and object where the viewer believes that this relationship is referential. What exceeds all those things and what 'ruins legibility' so radically is what you get when you look at Martijn Schuppers' paintings."
Prof. Mieke Bal
Wolfgang Ellenrieder (°GFR, 1959) is a master of camouflage and deception. He leads the habitual seeing patterns of the observer astray while giving a superficial beholder the lunatic illusion of being able to comprehend the pictures swiftly. This illusion of comprehension is the artistic medium – more than mere brushes and paint – that he uses to create his pictures.
Yes, they are first and foremost paintings, but not only paintings. In meticulous detail they speak to us of visible and invisible things, but there is more. In effect, they take advantage of the observer's predilection to strive for compatibility, but simultaneously caricature and confuse. The viewer wishes to correlate that which is seen with what experience says is 'known', but at the moment of assumed recognition the severance takes place – wait, what we are seeing is not recognisable after all (a garden, a tree, a villa in the park, a pleasant portrait) but is a representation of something else altogether.
What task remains for modern painting today but to arouse insecurity in the beholder? Painting has long cast off the academic virtues of expressiveness or a subjective phantasmagoria and is now active in a field which can be classified as collective insecurity permeated by vagueness of perception rather than as an affirmatively expressed curiosity.
Margit Zuckriegl,
Museum der Moderne Salzburg