Artist statement | Exhilarating | Joost Vandebrug
‘Exhilarating’ is a story about light and positivity. It started, however, in 2017 at a dark
place. Overwhelmed by anxiety, I found myself stuck in my home in the countryside
of France.
Inside the house, I had reduced my living and sleeping area to an old chaise longue
that stood next to the window, where my anxiety seemed most manageable. Through
the window, all I saw was the repetition of days going into nights – from darkness to
light and from light to darkness. Getting out of that state, was like learning to walk
again, and the 4-year journey that followed is what ‘Exhilarating’ is about. It's the bird
that awakens before dawn, but trusts that light is about to arrive, despite there is still
darkness all around.
Every moment of light and dark is a miracle. – Walt Whitman
Each work in ‘Exhilarating’ consists of one hundred small handmade paper cards
depicting vast and overwhelming mountainscapes, which were photographed a few
hours before dusk, each day. All individual works arranged together, in a diagonal
fashion, display the full range of these magical golden hours that separate day and
night. They are one hundred moments in time, inseparable to form one work, and in
turn, connected to become the series as a whole.
As I go through the motions of life, I am aware that darkness will always be looming,
but as I’m standing here today, in a place where there is light, I also accept that each
moment of darkness or light is inevitably connected to each other – and therefore, as
Whitman once wrote – a miracle. It’s the bliss of hindsight, which is also the place
where this story – my most intimate work to date – was created. From the moment in
time of photographing the mountains, to the mono-type process to bring the pigments
onto the paper. And finally, the pins, instead of glue or tape, to secure the works in
place. Each step embraces the fragility of the process, and consequently the
imperfections that might emerge, that in turn, have become an essential part of the
works as a whole.