Jan Pypers born in Knokke-Heist (1982) lives and works in Westerlo.
The work of Jan Pypers (1982) moves between fiction and reality. Although he was trained as a film producer, Pypers mainly realizes photographs that capture his models made of stone, wood, colored paper, papermachee.
By destroying the models after the photo has been taken, their only reason for existence becomes the final photo image.
Press release: SWIM
The untold story and desolate
dreams of Jan Pypers
It’s not a matter of the calm before the storm. These are places where silence and stillness set the tone. However, the daily routine in the works of the Flemish artist Jan Pypers (b. 1982) also has considerable tension, despite its static nature. Within the desolate silence of Pypers' compositions, there is space for questioning, memory and your own imagination. Is something about to happen? Logic is missing before our voyeurism sets in. With his background in film, Pypers approaches his images with a keen cinematographic eye, and this is in line with the work of the greatest cinematographic masters of now and then. Contour Gallery invites you to explore the border area between reality, dreams and their malleability in SWIM, a solo exhibition by Jan Pypers, in which a selection of new, but also earlier works from his Nightgardeners series is shown.
Nature in model
The misty meadow, the returning fox, some coloured chalk in the damp grass, and Mother a little further away, busy in the garden. The decor in Pypers' sculptures is a place where nature and people interact: where figures are in the woods, surrounded by water, or accompanied by an animal. The relationship between man and nature plays a major role in this work. It is surprising, but these forests, waters, animals, and the cinematic image in which they appear in reality show a scale model carefully built by the artist, which he provides with digital post-processing. Due to his background in film, Pypers gained experience with life-size sets, which incidentally was accompanied by a lack of control. The step to making models was therefore also quickly made for Pypers. Retaining total control, Pypers uses his models and digital skills to determine aspects such as light, perspective and atmosphere down to the smallest detail, after which he destroys the model, and the photo is the only final result. Pypers' work aligns with one of the most recent developments in photography, in which a combination of analogue and digital technologies is leading the way in a transformation of the profession.
Filling in a memory
While the artist retains control of his models by means of self-construction and processing, on the other hand these models are based on situations over which the artist feels he has no control: the events of his memories. For to what extent do these memories constitute an actual documentation of the reality that once took place? To what extent are they coloured by the stories, the photos, but also their own fantasy? Much like the works of Pypers, many of our memories are carried by their vivid details. Alienated and at a distance, we watch, filling in the gaps of the incomplete story with our imagination. Like weaving together the most curious elements from a dream, of which only the details remain.
Pypers’ work tells a story, but also invites the viewer to fill in parts for themselves.
No one notices. Only the fox, which feels like a voyeur.