Enchanting landscapes can be created through both your senses and your imagination. In this duo exhibition, images of bright, colourful places alternate with nocturnal, uninhabited nature. The latter, where there is no place for humans, only becomes visible under the light of the moon and stars. In the other case, abandoned spaces and buildings make a certain human presence tangible.
Lisanne Hoogerwerf (NL 1987) reflects in her work the disconnected relationships between humanity, nature, and culture. The images are often recognizable: desolate huts, oppressive landscapes, or strange scenes where humanity is absent.
Thanks to the lighting and use of colour, the atmosphere is surprisingly not unpleasant, but rather dreamy and picturesque. The fact that you can only guess what's going on makes her work so powerful, universal, and poetic at the same time.
She first creates models using various materials such as wood, sand, glue, or paper. To add colour and create atmosphere, she uses paint and chalk. She intuitively understands how to construct an image, for example, by dramatically positioning an object or creating contrast with the background. In her landscapes, Hoogerwerf uses exciting compositions with attractive colour combinations. This is how she constructs her scenes before the resulting image is photographed or filmed.
Vincent van Gaalen (NL 1984) travels to the last dark areas of Europe, where the night-time darkness has not (yet) been displaced by artificial light. In the midst of this darkness – surrounded by nothing more than his photo equipment, a tent and some rations – Van Gaalen photographs our human absence. Leaves, stones, water and air catch the light of the moon and stars. The deepest black looms, contours are amplified. In this dark world, reason makes way for imagination and darkness takes away control. The landscape remains barely visible – but palpable all the more.
‘Absence’ is an ongoing project that Van Gaalen started in 2020. In his work he studies the age-old friction between the human urge to create and the autonomy of nature. The renewed interest in ecology and society is reflected in the photo series ‘Absence’. For example. In the Netherlands, Terschelling is the only place where it really gets dark and where people and animals experience nature freely and unhindered. In this way, Van Gaalen shows how, even close to home, nature is slowly sliding off the map.