Searching for the brittle balance between escape and unease, Elia Vanderheyden (b. 2000) creates landscapes that are not quite too unsettling to preclude an invitation to wander aimlessly. An abstraction prone to glitching immerses us in a world where an absent horizon has swallowed all reference to time or place. Through a process that is as spontaneous as it is deliberate – and where technique and chance go hand in hand – the laser-cut prints, paintings, and digital installations create atmospheres that both entice and repel. They are blurred discoveries of a world never trodden by humans – sites forever inaccessible, or glimpsed only in a distant future beyond our existence. A world where Vanderheyden’s fascination with the showdown between the ominous and the sublime takes centre stage.
There are no working compasses in Vanderheyden’s landscapes. We move within the realm of what the artist calls ‘cosmic horror’, a concept that signals his inspiration by the work of writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). In Lovecraft’s stories, true terror lies not in monsters that can be seen and understood, but in a confrontation with the incomprehensible and unspeakable, with forces so primordial and immense that the human mind cannot grasp them without going mad. In a similar sense, Vanderheyden searches for the precarious crossroad where the grim and the wondrous touch one another. This indefinable unease forms the foundation of his vistas, which are never explicitly threatening yet permeated with discomfort. His images bring out the question: would we survive if we stepped into this artwork? Are we certain we’re still on Earth? The uncanny emerges as a way of breaking free from our familiar world, beckoning us to stray into the unknown.
And with that we reach the core of Vanderheyden’s artistry: his images are the culmination of a desire to escape our world, if only for a moment. In an age where, every day, we’re held captive by all manner of concerns and stimuli, these landscapes offer an open door. They are a way of creating a space of one’s own, where humans are absent and everything stands still and remains undefined. The absence of people is not, in this sense, a dystopian vision, but rather an expression of romantic optimism, where nature gains the upper hand without becoming threatening. Vanderheyden unites the ominous and the serene in a liberating duality. In this respect, the haze speckling many of his surfaces evokes the white noise that takes us aback when it’s finally truly quiet.
The surface’s hazy hum also safeguards distance and freedom. As a by-product of the laser cutter, the misty texture is deliberately cherished, for it prevents the works from becoming too obvious or too literal. Like a steamed-up veil clouding the view from a window, the distortion leaves space for the viewer to complete the landscape, should they wish to fathom the images. Where a clear depiction would leave our mind at rest, the fog stirs our imagination. The grain also recalls old photographs, blurring history and inviting us to associate the landscapes with another era. Here, fascination and wonder meet in a timeless shiver.
It’s no coincidence that Vanderheyden combines old techniques with contemporary technology. He begins by designing his landscapes digitally, separating the different layers of colour, which he then engraves into wood with a laser cutter before printing them on different kinds of paper in the Japanese manner. The AI he uses is a fairly ‘primitive’ programme from 2019 – a digital tool that does not always interpret correctly, and at times fails to transfer information, allowing glitches to generate unexpected plot twists. His technique thus becomes a voyage of discovery in which expansive imagined landscapes from video games meet remixed forests by the quintessential Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), one of his great sources of inspiration. For Vanderheyden, Friedrich embodies the epitome of the sublime in a way that resonates with cosmic horror. He draws from this Romantic tradition, where the sublime is not something you can pursue, but something that must befall you. If you go in search of it, it will not be found.
The sublime – the sense of something so vast it becomes almost unbearable – stands at the heart of Vanderheyden’s work. Friedrich’s paintings embody human insignificance in the face of a spiritual nature: solitary figures in expansive landscapes, ruins, misty seas, and infinite horizons. Like Friedrich, Vanderheyden seeks to create an atmosphere in which the viewer is confronted with something greater than themselves. Vanderheyden’s landscapes approach a longing for the infinite that becomes tangible, whilst a cluster of immateriality and maze-like forms dissolves into structures we cannot place. In these fluid worlds, the horizon is not only removed but also reinvented. Here, we can escape if we choose to stay.
Where Have the Birds Gone? is Elia Vanderheyden’s solo debut at KUBE Gallery in Genk. Here, the absence of birds becomes a metaphor for nature slipping away, yet within its uncanny silence there arises room for imagination. With this exhibition, Vanderheyden presents not only his woodcuts and works on paper, but also – for the first time – paintings and installations that draw the viewer even further into a world where the sublime and the elusive meet.
text: Yasmin Van ’tveld