Luc Dondeyne
There are always bright spots on the horizon
For the first time at the Transit gallery, Luc Dondeyne is exhibiting ‘work that leans towards abstraction’. Yet the artist immediately adds: ‘I have countered this too’.
I.
In his studio in Ramsdonk, past the bend at St Martin’s Church, Luc Dondeyne gallantly explains the beginnings of his new series of oil paintings entitled Swinging Mirrors (2022). He departed from the motif of an emergency thermal blanket. ‘I tried to capture the object’s geometry,’ he bluntly confesses. ‘It’s an attractive material in terms of structure. When laid out on the ground, this almost weightless, double-sided foil – gold on one side and silver on the other – is perfectly suited to formal experiments.’ It offers the same potential as the foil around chocolate bars: it can be folded, smoothed, rolled and pleated, compressed into a ball, or brutally crumpled. Luc Dondeyne says that, as a colourist, it is a challenge to paint reflective materials. They possess a certain ‘alchemy’.
Pictorial qualities aside, emergency blankets are anything but neutral. Decathlon sells them – not without cynicism or at least indifference – as ‘single-use survival blankets, with dual functions and two sides’. The golden side is heat-retaining and the silver one is cooling. Smart athletes and mountain hikers carry an emergency blanket in their rucksacks as standard. ‘Peace of mind in a small package’. ‘Excellent value for money’. So far so good.
Apart from, holidays, sports and games, the survival blanket initially calls to mind the harsh reality of the refugee crisis. The paper-thin, rustling blanket, designed to ensure thermal insulation, has been a familiar sight since 2015. We see it wrapped around the rained-out or driven-back migrants huddled at walls or barbed-wire fences near state borders, or on the shivering and half-drowned people who have been pulled from the sea or rescued from boats. More often than not, the thermal blanket is an ad hoc shroud. They are almost as ubiquitous as face masks nowadays.
‘I see the refugee crisis as one of the biggest issues of our time,’ says Luc Dondeyne. ‘We are experiencing the repercussions and consequences of colonialism: there is a direct link to the refugee crisis. The world is open to everyone today because of the internet. Migration is the obvious result. It’s understandable. How we respond is the real question. In my new series of canvases, I prefer not to address the issue (too) literally, but to formally objectify the facts in order to grasp them. Nevertheless, my images are layered and certainly not innocent. Without being corny or sentimental, they can somehow raise questions about the (geo)political, (socio)economic and climate debacle.’
II.
It would be wrong to assume, purely based on this initial springboard, that the emergency blanket motif has unilaterally triumphed in the new work. In addition to the seven canvases of which it is the exclusive keynote, Luc Dondeyne has also delivered three utterly different paintings to the Transit gallery. They include figures, young and attractive people, glowing with health, athletic, never in need of an emergency blanket – clearly (?) safe. Luc Dondeyne speaks of a ‘counterpoint’.
‘For these works, I departed from the idea of movement,’ says Luc Dondeyne, ‘from the dance that I developed in collaboration with three young Portuguese performers. I needed dancers as models – moving bodies that I could observe, draw, sketch, etch and photograph. I wanted to be able to work from photographic material. My models all tend to be people with whom I’ve crossed paths more or less by accident. But in this case, I grasped the bull by the horns. I knew all three models from my teaching practice. They all pose for the drawing class. But they had never posed – let alone performed – together. They’d only passed each other in the corridor, so the connection was tenuous (although the two girls were a bit closer). But I knew it would click! All three operate at the intersection of art, dance and performance. They also have connections in Portugal; they are extremely mobile and live in different places. They are from the Lisbon area.’
‘I asked them if we could work together around the theme of improvisation; to which they enthusiastically agreed. I played Brazilian music in my studio, which features a genuine, old-fashioned stage – a ballroom relic. Improvisation was the most natural thing in the world; they were born to move... it was a privilege to work with them. You don’t make paintings like Rokoko or Stone Flower alone. I deliberately chose not to let them improvise with the survival blanket. I wanted to keep that strictly separate.’
III.
Strictly separate or not, the figurative works and emergency blanket paintings coalesce in the presentation at the Transit gallery. The artist’s choice of exhibition title, Swinging Mirrors, can be taken literally: the dancing, swinging mirror is none other than the tilting kind from your cloakroom, bathroom or boudoir. But isn’t the single-use survival blanket also a kind of swinging mirror, with its alternating gold and silver sides that both capture and reflect the sunlight?
Swinging Mirrors refers equally to music, dance and jazz (the ‘swing’) and to the ‘swinging’ or slippage of meanings: the indeterminacy of our attitude in the face of the global ecological and existential crisis; the fluctuation of our responsiveness in the face of the life-threatening situation in which we find ourselves today. In addition, Swinging Mirrors also refers to an earlier series of works in which water plays an important role. After all, this also revolves around the changeability of light and, in terms of subject, the duality surrounding beaches. They exude an air of escapism but, at the same time, the water can be extremely threatening. One only has to think of the climate breakdown. This dichotomy fascinates Dondeyne and makes him want to study it in more detail, albeit pictorially: this ultimately being the true research objective.
Luc Dondeyne does not aspire to be a light-hearted painter. He is captivated by contrasts. His artistic personality is not dominated by unremitting doom and gloom. The painter needs ‘both sides’ and tries to work this out in his paintings. ‘You can see that the situation is incredibly sombre, yet there are always points of light on the horizon. I have to cling to that too, otherwise the reality is unbearable. What isn’t coming our way? Like all my contemporaries, I experienced the oil crisis in the 1970s. When you think about it, it’s been going wrong ever since. New conflicts arise one after the other. Contemporary policy has degenerated into pure crisis management. It’s constant fire-fighting, of both large and small conflagrations; there is hardly any time for distance or reflection. This is merely an observation, not a reproach...’
IV.
The two diverse clusters of works in Swinging Mirrors turn the exhibition into a diptych. One can also speak of this in formal terms: the seven ‘abstracta’ and the three ‘bodies’ converge around one central point, Tractatus (2022). At 95 x 200 cm, is the largest work in the exhibition, both navel and vanishing point. Perhaps Tractatus, which depicts a double fan, refers to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by the Austrian-English philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is not only his magnum opus but also the only work to be published during his lifetime. In the philosopher’s own words, it is primarily ethical in nature.
The most famous proposition (no. 7) in the work – despite the treatise’s title – is ‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’. In line with the earlier arguments (1-6), number 7, which is not elucidated, appears to refer to an essential narrowing of philosophy and the importance of showing over speaking. In other words, it is not because something is unsayable that it cannot be visualised – for example, in art. Thus understood, Dondeyne’s Tractatus is a programmatic work.
Tractatus depicts a survival blanket folded into the shape of a fan. ‘It’s rather showy’ says the painter. ‘It’s almost like a peacock’s tail.’ The seven abstract works flanking Tractatus might not be as abstract as we think. Beneath Antigone, lies the hint of a female body. In the space-filling canvas True Mask, you discern a helmet with almond-shaped eye-holes, of the kind worn by an Hellenic warrior. Deviant Wing conceals a human wing – an arm. Who knows, Echo-Affect might depict a cellular structure. Dondeyne’s Swinging Mirrors are allegories.
Luc Dondeyne concedes that True Mask is ominous. ‘There is a dark side to it, even though, at first glance, you see a beautiful motif – a floral motif or a fan.’ All sorts of things are indeed happening in the canvas: the work is covered in a wood-like veil and it radiates a red glow, as though burning from within.... ‘That incandescence is indeed reminiscent of fire’, agrees the painter. ‘I deliberately used the wood motif, it’s an extremely flammable material...’ As for my free association with the Greek helmet, that idea also finds favour: ‘The Greek character of the mask puts things into a historical context. Conflict is not a recent phenomenon, but on the contrary, it is a systemic flaw in the human phenomenon.’
Antigone (2022) is an embodied abstraction, a body represented in a non-figurative way. ‘The Marian blue is only semblance. It’s a huge challenge for a painter to inject the colour blue into the reflective actuality of (aluminium) foil – it’s something you completely indulge in as a painter... an indescribable and inexhaustible pleasure.’
Echo Affect consists of ‘two mutually seeking and responding spheres. During the pandemic, there was much talk of the echo effect, or how communication spins in circles. I thought, I’m going to turn that into an echo effect.’
V.
With Stone Flower , Rokoko , Waiting for the Sun (Day 22) and Closed Luc Dondeyne takes us into his recognisable, swirling universe of delicately painted human figures. We face, respectively, a meticulously observed blonde teenager (detail, frontal), a girl (full, seen from behind) and, amongst others, three resting or dancing adolescents, the Portuguese performers who modelled for Dondeyne.
There is deep affection and love in Stone Flower, even for the dancers: it’s palpable. Psychology, warns Dondeyne, is nevertheless a fairly vague concept as far as he is concerned. ‘How it functions exactly, I don’t know. It either happens or it doesn’t. That’s the miracle of painting. In the flamenco tradition, people talk about duende, a moment of inspiration. I strongly believe in that. You can perform virtuoso technical feats from which nothing emanates. Virtuosity for its own sake is meaningless. You must endeavour to capture the perfect moment... that split-second when something exceptional happens. What is it exactly? It’s impossible to grasp.’ (Whereof one cannot speak, Luc Dondeyne shows.)
The work Stone Flower, depicting the improvising trio, is so nimble, decorative, dynamic and infectious that one could be forgiven for wishing its creator a future as a fresco or ceiling painter. The characters are like frolicking twenty-first century putti. It abounds with the joy of painting. The canvas possesses a depth that is not depth – an indeterminacy, a ‘background’. Stone Flower is bathed in a dazzling blue light: is Dondeyne expressing his love for Tiepolo here?
The same figures appear in Rokoko, only now they are sunbathing on a stone balustrade around a nebulous pond – sensual, cooing or purring with pleasure. It is a typically ambiguous ode to life, and of the kind we have come to expect from Luc Dondeyne.
The blond girl from Waiting for the Sun (Day 22) stares straight into the sun. Her eyes are unprotected. Decent anti-glare and UV-protective sunglasses are nowhere to be seen. Worse, with both thumbs and forefingers, the figure pushes her eye muscles upwards, making it impossible to turn away. We are face to face with a blind seer in the making…
A similar short circuit occurs in Closed, in which a girl seems to hesitate before a bead curtain. And finally, in Rokoko, doesn’t one of the characters slip on the stone balustrade? In any case, it is an alienating sight: a shoe, a single bare foot, a senselessly contorted torso. There seems to be something wrong.
VI.
Wittgenstein states in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that ‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’. And with these words, he pinpoints the limitations of logic and rational thought, whilst also revealing a fundamental layer of meaning for art.
Silently, Luc Dondeyne shows in Swinging Mirrors that which cannot be articulated, that which escapes unambiguous interpretation, that which continuously slips away,
neither gold nor silver
neither hot nor cold
neither static nor dynamic
neither physical nor abstract
neither introspective nor expressive
neither committed nor indifferent
neither good nor evil.
‘There are always points of light on the horizon.’
Barbara De Coninck, Antwerp, 23 October 2022
Translation Helen Simpson