vandeCamp & Heesterbeek
Seven years ago Patricia vandeCamp and Marc Heesterbeek started their Art journey with the search for the borders of portrait photography. They started approaching portaits in a conceptual manner. Playing with the universal rules of esthetics that have always been dominant in portrait art they stretched the meaning of identity and self. In these experiments beauty was always the leading factor. By moving from surreal to more abstract the focus shifted to finding balanced compositions using the portrait as rough material. Identity made place for existance.
After carefully deconstructing the photographs the identity of the person portrayed is no longer relevant, there is only the image; the composition of light and dark grays. The original portrayed persons are still recognizable but are now part of a larger whole; albeit stripped to the existential minimum in a balanced composition. This leads to a poetic silence which according to vandeCamp & Heesterbeek is much needed in a world where everything has become fluid and war and chaos are infiltrating our everyday reality. This poetic silence, brittle as it may be, can be used for a moment of reflection
REVERSE PAINTING: DECONSTRUCTION AND MINIMALISM
In the case of Patricia vandeCamp and Marc Heesterbeek’s photography, the method of deconstruction must be seen in a philosophical context, where a photograph is critically analyzed in order to arrive at an image stripped of all its unnecessary ballast.
The artist duo does this through reverse painting, where they literally remove everything that is not relevant to the subject, they “erase” the photograph. That is, by removing details and color (they also reduce the amount of grayscale), Patricia and Marc remove what is essential to the photograph, the capture of everything. By removing as much as possible, their work takes on a painterly quality that makes the viewer doubt that it is a photograph.
By framing and reframing, they often end up with only a fraction of the original photograph, which they enlarge beyond the original pixel limit. The artists “break” the pixels and end up with the pixel structure interfering with the skin structure. This process continues until the person in the portrait becomes generic and only the shape is visible. These are two methods of achieving deconstruction. The choices involved are purely intuitive.
Since both are working separately on a picture in different places, they do not always know each other’s motives for the changes and decisions they make. In their ideal situation, the picture begins to make itself. (Side note: The “breaking” of the pixels is something that is better understood when you see the pictures live, printed in the large format of 120 cm square or the 80 x 160 cm size). This was the case with “2050 204”.
As Patricia and Marc worked on the image, sending it back and forth, they discovered that the images began to create themselves. The man in the portrait had to disappear for the picture to work. They both came to this conclusion at the same time in our different locations. Only the lips and the white shirt are clearly visible, the rest has to be reconstructed in the viewer’s mind. It was then that they knew that from now on they no longer needed to add anything, that they could arrive at a more interesting abstraction by removing. There was no longer any need for fictional objects From “2050 204” on, the duo became truly minimal. There are only two moments in their workflow that are clearly linked to either Patricia or Marc. The photograph of the model is always taken by Patricia, the final print is always signed and delivered by Marc. In between this Alpha and Omega, work separation is a blurred field where digital files are sent back and forth over the Internet until both Patricia and Marc are satisfied that the image is finished. It is a process of finding an image within an image, with Patricia’s photographic skills providing the perfect foundation for Marc’s editing skills. Patricia’s editing skills create a new view for Marc to find another image within the image.
