DIRK BRAECKMAN

March 1- April 3, 2007

Dirk Braeckman’s, photographs are mainly images made up of blacks, whites and greys, that fluctuate between abstraction and representation. His works represent “portraits of interiors” which are not staged and not often peopled; they are the expression of the artist’s momentary experience with a strong autobiographical character. The material in his photos is drawn from his immediate surroundings; places and spaces, preferably interiors, which he does not systematically explore, but rather documents in chance encounters on a more intuitive level.

He also uses other sources as well, as photographs from magazines and the Internet as well as reproductions of older works of his, which he retouches.

His pictures circle around what cannot be rendered in the manner of a portrait or likeness, but rather in a manner so that the artist’s personal existence is made emotionally perceptible as a dream or mood image. The situations involved, are quite easily and directly identifiable.

The titles of the works-initials and numbers-refer to private codes and do not direct the viewer in the reading of the image. Yet, Braeckman’s photos are not merely his subjective representation of reality. They are also the pursuit of an objective representation of what surrounds us, expressed by the artist’s desire for the outmost abstraction of what is depicted.

In his photographs, he creates a closed reality, one that, though derived from his personal environment, manifests itself as a whole isolated in itself. In this manner, Dirk Braeckman stages a deception, a feint – in a camouflage of image and reality, as it were – which annuls the interpretation of the picture as a “window on reality”. (Christoph Kivelitz, 2006-7).

The gallery remains open Tue-Fri 10:30-20:00 Saturday 12:00-16:00.