Frederik Vercruysse’s Solo Show ‘Windows’ at Spazio Nobile.

Window of A Writer, 2021
Photography
Fine art print on rag paper
86,6 x 126,6 cm unframed
87,2 x 127,2 cm framed
Signed and dated
Edition of 5 + 2 A.P.

One Window Two Vases, 2021
Photographs – Diptych
Fine art print on rag paper
29 x 39 cm unframed
29,6 x 39,6 cm framed
Signed and dated
Edition of 5 + 2 A.P.

Opening during Brussels Gallery Weekend, Spazio Nobile presents the gallery’s first solo show with Belgian artist Frederik Vercruysse. In this exhibition, titled Windows, Vercruysse explores the image as a window that opens onto the real and the imaginary. The figurative space takes new shapes in the defined frame, sometimes blurred by frosted glass or a projected shadow. At different levels, the object appears in a humanised landscape, but without human presence.

Frederik Vercruysse invites the visitor to confront the analogue image pushed to the limit, pixelated, becoming truer to itself the closer one gets. Purposefully blurred and distorted in a decomposition recreated by our eye that tries to capture its presence, the composition of the image becomes impressionistic and is reborn as the pointillist work of a painter with small brushstrokes.

The glass, the windows, the glass plates of the photographer of yesteryear become the common thread of this intense investigation. For years, Frederik Vercruysse has tried to combine an analytical, realistic, objective and documentary spirit in his photographic work. He uses the camera like a high-tech tool to produce images in which the frame is entirely staged. By distancing himself, he assembles fragments of the images that he produces over time, to compose lyrical, even hidden, narratives. He thus passes on the feeling of existence, presence and absence, light and its intense rays.

The photographs were translated into three-dimensional objects whose strength lies in the transparency and subtlety of a living material. The glass has been hand-blown and laminated in the fire. It translates the space in a pictorial and reflective way with a visual scope linked to the space of the gallery. The nature of the image comes to life thanks to the luminous glass frame and shimmering sides cut in the stained-glass workshop. Interplaying with invisibility and with an addition of a new layer of handmade laminated glass or mirror glass, Vercruysse explores the tridimensional and visual effects of framing and unframing his photographs. The subtle play of colours in the photograph and the amplitude of the play of light and shadow allow the image to float in its own space-time.

Related: Interview with Antwerp-based Photographer Frederik Vercruysse.

One Window Two Vases, 2021
Photographs – Diptych
Fine art print on rag paper
29 x 39 cm unframed
29,6 x 39,6 cm framed
Signed and dated
Edition of 5 + 2 A.P.

Nine Frames, 2021
Photography
Fine art print on rag paper
60 x 40 cm unframed
60,6 x 40,6 cm framed
Signed and dated
Edition of 5 + 2 A.P.

Window With Shutters, 2021
Photography
Fine art print on rag paper
18,1 x 30 cm unframed
18,7 x 30,6 cm framed
Signed and dated
Edition of 5 + 2 A.P.

Mountain View In Progress, 2020
Light Box
100 x 66,66 cm print size
101 x 67,66 x 15 cm cm box size
Signed and numbered
Edition of 3 + 2 A.P.

[Images courtesy of Spazio Nobile. Photography by Frederik Vercruysse.]