Some notes from the saucy, blue-eyed shelter

16.12.2020 0 Tykkää 0 kommenttia Val Smets

— May

For the past six months, I have been working on an exhibition that should have taken place in May. Now, because of the Corona pandemic, the calendar has changed and the show has been postponed until October. Nevertheless, my frustration felt about this shift has been redirected into striving energy harnessed to start a new project: make stop motion animation based on paintings.

New technology has highly impacted our notion of time. More than usual, I can feel the concept of time has changed and evolved during these past weeks of self-isolation. I’ve seen myself checking the calendar to check which day it is today, a few minutes ago. 

The weeks beat on, the weekend arrives. The confinement leads me to build new daily routines and works with other materials than painting. Each day holds something to look forward to: my basilic seeds growing, the cloud shapes in the sky, the homemade cookies in the oven. 

I’ve started taking a lot of different pictures with my phone camera. While fastly flipping from one picture to another, I’ve been brought back to my childhood flipbook animation. From this memory, I’ve started creating and recording short animation performed by small figurines, stuff animals, and virtual drawings based on my daily life routines. Although being wary about the existence of timelapse, I believe my stop motion animation differs by the fact that I don’t use software to create it but, scroll the image with my fingers while recording the screen. It also reflects and questions the technology’s impact on our generation.

— December

In French, we have this adage « Les choses n’arrivent pas par hazard », literally:  the things don’t happen by chance. I believe that in painting as in life, there is no coincidental meeting.

Like the new « tools » I would use in my practice, people come into our lives and maybe leave at some point, but these meetings had to be there at a specific time. A time that makes you share new adventures, open new doors, be more curious.

Playing with my short animation lead me later – during my residency in Graz, Austria – to project animation on my painting. Before that, the limited space of the isolation during the lockdown brought a new rhythm in my canvas e.g. Some notes from the green late shelter: Actions are more precise, colors are more controlled. 

Nevertheless, arrived in Graz in July, I was eager to paint without any limited & furnished space. The precision gained from the lockdown merged with the new freedom of the studio, the energy of the other artists I’ve met there, and the new environment. All those meetings are some paths leading to a bigger path. But you can’t see the path all at once. Now with a step back, I can see how all those bits were interconnected. Without the lockdown, I would have done my graduation show before the residency, I would not have played with projection… I would not.. – « with ‘if’s you could put Paris in a bottle » the French say.

So thanks to this year, I had the experience to do the first immersive exhibition in Graz during my residency. I started building some mushroom-sculpture set up with metal structures through the meet of a wheeling artist, I painted a new body of works… This helped me to build my graduation show in a very different way, more immersive in my sense.

This is my last article, thank you for reading me. I’m writing right now from Graz, where I have the – unfortunate – chance to be reinvited as ones could not travel. I’m starting to write my thesis, putting all the bits in one picture, and meanwhiles collaborating with the ’wheeling artist on an artwork reflecting the question of technology’s impacts/digitalization for a group show exhibition.

Les choses n’arrivent pas par hazard.