Frank van Schoor
Ruud van Empel (1958) is a versatile artist. He has already enjoyed a broad artistic career as a decor and theatre designer, graphic designer, and film-maker. He has worked on various television productions as an art director, and in 1993 received the Charlotte Köhler Award for his television work and other associated activities. In the early nineties he began to present his artistic work to the general public, creating collages of plants, animals, flowers and trees, mounted in large forest landscapes that he had previously photographed in black-and-white. This black-and-white collage was then photographed once more to create an even whole. When the possibilities of Adobe Photoshop (=processing photos with the aid of a software package) became available, he could adapt his collages further. From the mid-nineties onward, he devoted all his endeavour to art photography, developing his images in thematic series. In this way, several series have been generated since 1995: The Office, Study in Green and, more recently, World, Moon & Venus.
Since 2002, he has been working a great deal with nature and, in doing so, he has definitively found his present-day characteristic visual language: photographic works with an unbelievable clarity of colour, rich in detail, with intriguing representation, and a fairytale ambience. Children often feature prominently in his images. Ruud van Empel combines forms on the computer and assembles pictures that deceive our perception. His work balances between reality and perfection. They are magical-realistic images, as it were, a cross between narrative painting and staged photography. The artwork that Ruud van Empel finally presents to the public seems harmonious and self-evident. The sophisticated viewer will suspect that intensive work has gone into the photo work presented, but the definitive image looks extremely refined. To gain a good insight into the photography of Ruud van Empel, it is useful to review the major external influences from painting and photography on his work.
CAMERA WORK is pleased to present an exhibition by American photographer Mark Laita. The exhibition will commence on February 4, 2012, and for the first time in Europe will feature the three new series Sea, Serpentine and Amaranthine with unique photographs of the most fascinating sea creatures, the most impressive serpents and ...
« I began my first self-portraits at the age of 10. My maternal grandmother was the spark for this new passion. She was the one who bought me a little red Kodak, even if I remember having to go to great lengths in order to get it. In my first snapshots, I took center stage in front of the camera. I just reproduced what I knew: fashion models. Born to a ...
Applying cultural clichés as a catalyst, the exhibition focuses on stereotypes, which has given cultural meaning to the specificities of a given region, Finland. Literally speaking Finland does not belong to the Arctic in a geographic sense, but the Finns are – as are, sa...
Le masque est le support de la puissance, la médiation entre l’être supérieur, les ancêtres et les humains.Il accompagne l’homme au limite de la vie et du surnaturel. Il met face à face les dieux, les génies et les hommes. La relation entre le photographe et le masque exige un rapport de compréhension, un...
La nouvelle exposition de Marc Le Mené à la galerie Pascal Gabert est une petite rétrospective de son travail photographique qui parcourt une trentaine d’années de création débutant par des autoportraits, des nus, des images de nuit (Paris, Rome) pour se diriger vers des images construites et imagin...
Antoine Picard développe un travail où la nature et la ville se mêlent en des formes autonomes. Dans la rue émergent des signes de réappropriation du végétal, alors que la campagne est parsemées de vestiges urbains. Il semble qu'un ordre nouveau se met en place. L'homme reste le...
La Cité présente Migrants en Guyane, Chercher la vie, une exposition de photographies de Frédéric Piantoni, réalisée en coproduction avec le Musée des cultures guyanaises. En quatre séquences thématiques - les parcours, les quartiers, l’immigration des femmes et les fro...
Après le succès remporté aux foires de photographie contemporaine Chic Art Fair et Fotofever Paris, la galerie Madé vous invite à (re)découvrir le travail d’une jeune artiste aux talents prometteurs, Maia Flore. Pour sa première exposition solo, Maia présentera la série compl&eg...