PHOTOGRAPHY

Patrick Lemineur is a hunter-gatherer, looking for raw DNA.

He doesn’t edit, nor does he cut his pictures. He doesn’t filter.

He shows. “What I see, is what you get.”

It’s pure, naked photography.

Patrick does his hunting close by. In Flanders, in Belgium. No need for tropical destinations in order to find beauty. For him, there’s a shining beauty in our own desolation.

For in his world, there is charm, even elegance to find in ugliness. There’s humor in bleakness, joy in sadness.

And there’s always hope to find for those like him who dig into the hidden world and reveal what is disguised.

His unpolished images trigger memories. They remind us of what was, what is and what has never been. Only when we truly want to see, do we recognize. Only then, we can acknowledge the other.

INSTALLATIONS

The hunter-gatherer overlooks his catch. His pictures are the raw material, the gametes. Unfertilized, unprocessed, unedited.

The artist comes to life when choosing his images. Or do they choose him?

He works with them. Not with the image itself, but with what it stands for, what it represents. It’s associations with odours and actions. With light or the deprivation of it. They’re not snapshots but dynamic, expanding entities.

We enter, we see. They make their sounds, they swing in the soft breeze, they communicate with us. That’s how his installations are born: as zygotes, products of interaction between the artist and us. His story, his pains and joy intermingled with the images.

Patrick’s work is hermetic by choice. We are not challenged to understand the artist nor are we forced to share his views. There’s no key. Its only purpose is to invite us to share, to call on our emotions and our memories. To write our own story. We become an intrinsic part of the installation.

Patrick Lemineur shows the world as it is, inside us as well as around us. And he challenges us: what do we feel, how do we judge?  Is what we see, real? Or do we see what we think we should see? Is it our judgement, our projection, our prejudice?

In many of his installations he plays with our voyeurism, with our inclination to discover what is normally hidden from view.

And above all, he tests us: can we see and NOT judge?  

Can we?

Is it possible to look without prejudice or context? Just seeing?

SCULPTURES

What Patrick Lemineur misses in this world, he creates himself.

With his own hands he saws, he welds, he molds. In creating the sculpture, the contact with his materials is essential. Wood. Metal. Concrete that is poured, that hardens.  

There is no image, no boundary between the outside world and our innermost feelings.

He draws us into his imaginary universe where a sledge has to be circular and an inflatable doll hard as stone.

He creates the things we miss from our childhood. To be really happy, to be scared, to be amazed.

Annick Lambert

Januari 2020