Now in insitu
“MONSTER PLANT”
Marcel Berlanger
13/11 – 24/12/2010
Galerie IN SITU (Arbeidstraat, 110 – Aalst)
Marcel Berlanger (° B, 1965) relies on self-taken photographs, reproductions of scientific journals or images taken from the internet. He uses these specific images to decipher the stories behind the images and situations and transform them into a new truth. The world in-between, the magic of appearing and disappearing, the absent and the unconscious, they all play a major role in the Berlanger’s investigative visual work. In a sense Berlanger always works in the same way. The image selection is always the first major step in the working process. The mixing of various sources in the composition of a picture and the combined grouping of natural and artificial elements remain essential. He examines the medium of "painting" in its many different facets, which can be grouped around two poles.
On the one hand, he strongly emphasises the experiment. He produces, according to very different physical processes, both hyper-realistic representations and abstract spray paintings. Sometimes these tracks cross each other and combinations of different modes of expression come into being. In this investigative process he also pays great attention to the image carrier, which can range from canvas to aluminium and synthetic fibres. When he chooses a self-made translucent carrier he does so to allow his paintings and sculptures to function in the space. Freestanding or suspended in the open space, they always allow the surroundings to play a role in the overall image. They are integrated both inside and outside, in a rural or urban environment.
On the other hand, he focuses on the strength of a striking image and the mechanisms that control our perceptions. He always starts from photos and makes frequent use of grid structures which he fills with paint frame by frame, following the image on the model as accurately as possible. Once the artwork is finished, it becomes, in turn, the object of our perception. In this way, the relation between the painted surface and the nature and thickness of the image carrier play an important role.
Most of the works are painted on a type of plastic that is soaked with liquid polyester. In this way he obtains a thin and strong image carrier with a fibrous structure that is much clearer, more regular and mechanistic-looking than canvas.
Berlanger is a gifted artist whose work - mostly monochrome - demonstrates a predilection for very tight rhythms. Sometimes Berlanger’s hyper-realistic "painted" parts of a composition dialogue or fight with abstract parts. Both approaches can overlap each other when he works his paintings by drawing grid structures over them or spraying them with smooth lines. The artist as his own graffitist.
Berlanger’s vocabulary has become quite extensive but it is never certain how long an image will hold his attention and whether the subject, once abandoned, will pop up again at a later stage. He tastes each design, carefully examines each image, repeats it, and copies the painting on different formats and media. There are series of seascapes, weeping willows, cypresses, seranoas, owls ... A picture is decomposed down to the last grain, the pixel. Marcel Berlanger always finds various options within the same theme and surprises and moves the viewer with new revelations.
This exhibition proposes a series of works in which plants are the main protagonists.
Jan De Nys
