Meet our graduates
Abel Kleinblatt | Brahim Tall | Dajo Van Den Bussche | Ernest Thiesmeier | Frederik Aerts | Ini Vandervorst | Jente Waerzeggers | Liza Vandenbempt | Luka D'haese | Miguel Rozpide | Nikolaj Jessen | Yoonha Jung
#1 | Abel Kleinblatt
A Film on Form and Function
A visual essay questioning our views of the use of public spaces.
Contact
Instagram @abelkleinblatt
#2 | Brahim Tall
Tukuleur
In Tukuleur, I try to give shape to the feeling and experience of being mixed in the West. The film is an attempt to solidify this feeling into image. By weaving together my own experience and black literature, I was able to shape ideas for the film. To give these ideas a body, I worked with dancer Stanly Olivier. Together we explored ways of presenting ourselves to the outside world and the interaction between presentation and representation and gazes. The societal gaze, the internal gaze, and the interpretation of these two for the individual became a central theme. In the library of Luca School of Arts in Brussels, we found examples of presentation and representation throughout art history. These traditions in representation, and the manner in which we tend to read them, affect the way in which we interpret the world around us. By shifting them around in this film, their interpretation becomes ambiguous. And that’s exactly what being mixed is; ambiguous!
Contact
Instagram @_brahimtall_
#3 | Dajo Van Den Bussche
Caterpillar
It seems that in Van den Bussche’s images, time no longer has any value. There is no
future. Only depersonalisation. Dispersion. An absence from the world. A topography of emptiness. Observing these images, one realizes it’s difficult to recognise and place
oneself somewhere if the stamp of time has been removed. There’s no routine, no
everyday. Here and there, an element can be identified, but consciousness is soon lost again since time is no longer traversed like a series of successive steps, it is instead a disappearance, an abandonment.
The place is the artist’s birthplace. Ostend. Yet it does not look anything like what one
might imagine when thinking about Belgium’s biggest coastal town. The landscape here is desolate and exceptionally silent. There’s no story to be told, you might say the image is mute. So here, in this face-off, I am no longer the person looking at the landscape. I am the person being looked at by the landscape. It’s almost hostile, or austere to say the least. The image is matte, black and white, anti-spectacular, yet courageous.
Text by Patrick Carpentier
Contact
Instagram @dajo.vandenbussche
#4 | Ernest Thiesmeier
Good luck!
Framed prints
Photographs and commercial flyers from the street. Conversations with strangers. An exploration of the urban environment and aspects of the life lived therein: money, irrational beliefs, chance, the lust for success and the quest for basic human happiness. This is what Good Luck! essentially is about. Both with regard to content and the way it came about.
Ernest Thiesmeier works with photography and graphic design. Collections of discarded materials and conversations with strangers are essential in his artistic practice. Other people’s trash is his treasure, and the flash of his camera is his best friend.
Contact
Instagram @ocular.dysfunction
#5| Frederik Aerts
What Stays?
What Stays? is a search for things left behind, traces of things that don’t exist anymore. Frederik investigates the things we often overlook in the urban environment, and links these on a personal level.
Frederik often reproduces his photographic images by scanning or rephotographing them, in search of new materiality.
Contact
Instagram @frederik_aerts @ongelijksoortig
#6 | Ini Vandervorst
Esperantolaan
Steel sculptures, bathed in vinegar
Esperantolaan is an installation of steel sculptures. The installation refers to all living materials and organisms and represents a biotope, in which infrared lamps keep the objects in a living environment. They are bathed in vinegar to stop the growth process on their skin. Ini Vandervorst are visual artists who develop philosophical thoughts. These thoughts usually form the core of their practice, in which they always explore which medium, process or technique is most suitable for converting those thoughts into real life.
Contact
Instagram @vorstini
#7 | Jente Waerzeggers
360°
In 360°, Jente Waerzeggers returns to the basis of his practice — his photographic archive. He shows the core of his photographic work, which covers 5 years — the documentation of the people around him, in all their aspects, preferably taken at close range.
Jente Waerzeggers (Belgium, *1999) is a Belgian audiovisual artist and the co-founder of “Not So Difficult” magazine” and “De Nooit Moede” (†). His work moves between image and sound — from editorial work for the music scene to videography, publishing, and music projects, all centred around collaboration. He has recently founded his own publishing house, “(y) publishing”, through which the publication of 360° is available.
Contact
@jente.waerzeggers
@y___publishing
#8 | Liza Vandenbempt
Picture yourself a love letter
Picture yourself a love letter is a series made by Liza Vandenbempt, in which she represents a search for love. During her last bachelor year, Liza lost her interest, and passion, for photography. She decided to use her master’s as an opportunity to find it back. By giving herself small tasks and collecting the daily images she takes, Liza Vandenbempt tries to retrieve her passion. At the exhibition, we see a selection of her daily pictures. These images are important for her because they kept her going and made sure that she never really stopped taking images.
Contact
Instagram: @liza.vdb
#9 | Luka D'haese
information_about_you
In a society where data is ruling everything, Luka D’haese tries to seek the contrast between human intimacy and this rather mechanical environment. Her interest lies in the relationship between humans and technology, identity, language and its connection to image.
In information_about_you, she uses her alleged interests on Instagram to generate a portrait of the alter ego that Instagram created of her. The interests are retrieved from the data she downloaded from her Instagram account. In this data file, there is a folder called “information_about_you”, which contains about 100 words and sentences that are, according to Instagram, her interests.
Contact
Instagram @luka.dhaese
#10 | Miguel Rózpide
For the First Time
Pigment prints, double-sided oak frames and mirrors
30x40cm & 5,6x7cm
From I to 0 uses first experiences of different people as a starting point. Using a conceptual approach, this project aims to increase the dynamics between audience and author by visualizing emotions and by investigating the duality that ensues from differences in interpretation. Society is thought to be socially constructed through human interpretation. People interpret each other’s behaviour, and these interpretations form the social bond. As a result, the artist can imagine and interpret these experiences without being hindered by their social and cultural background.
By contesting the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, Miguel Rózpide tries to approach a wide range of subjects in a multi-layered way, involving the viewer in a physical and spiritual way. Images and text are confronted while being interrelated through memory and projection.
Contact
Instagram @miguel.rozpide
#11 | Nikolaj Jessen
Notes from Heaven: I Am, Decomposing
Video & objects in various length/dimensions.
I Am, Decomposing is the last of three episodes, in which the artist, Nikolaj Jessen, takes on a journey and uses the concept of journey as a metaphor for a self-therapeutic relationship. In his project Notes from Heaven: I, Dysnomialumen, he created clay sculptures. After this, he realized that he was too attached to those objects and he decided to let them decompose in this last chapter, so that the constituent elements could be recycled for the benefit of nature and to support new life. For Nikolaj, going on a journey is a way to find pleasure and to live. It is an act to experience freedom, away from the burden of superior powers who he believes exist to make us anxious. The journey is a way for Nikolaj to get in touch with the untouched psychic depth and embrace human consciousness.
Contact
Instagram @Nikjessen
#12 | Yoonha Jung
Distant
For Yoonha Jung, photography is a tool to see the familiar from a distance, creating an overview. Things that are usually invisible when you are outside this environment, come into view. Jung’s current practice takes a minimal form. Visualization is subtle and the subjects disappear. Furthermore, multiple boundaries are blurred: the boundaries between reality and virtuality, space and image, and between photography and other media. In this way, viewers examine their own ideas of them.
Distant shows 5,000 images that have been collected in Jung’s mobile phone for over 5 years. They are put together, barely showing any details. We only see the passage of time. By arranging these images differently, Jung explores how one’s perspective on time and memory can shift.
Contact
#WeArt