Vigil-Bruno Dubner

Courtesy NEXTLEVEL Magazine, August 2008
http://www.nextleveluk.com/
By Maria Carolina Baulo

Abstraction and photography seem to be terms completely opposite. Such a thing as an abstract photography sounds paradoxical. Anyway, the photographer Bruno Dubner tries to find the way to link those concepts by constructing an image as abstract as it could be and putting the main emphasis in light and white. “There are several ways in which a photograph could look abstract: movement, out of focus, superposition, but it looks like it should always be the track or the sign of “something”. I believe photography goes far beyond the photographic take”, the artist said. In these works, Dubner obtains nothing but the light the objects photographed emit; that track or sign together with the power of hazard, clearly relates his work with the main ideas of the abstract expressionists artists he admires.It is interesting the way Dubner finds to combine white with the meaning of vigil. Vigil refers to those moments you are unable to sleep, especially at night. And the night is the perfect environment for the artist to explore how photography could print the track of the light. Because when we say light we also refer, by omission, to dark or darkness; when we talk about white we also refer to its counterpart or to other colors. Light’s whiteness subsumes every other color as well as it brings us an entire world to our eyes while making things visible. Light could guide our movements and give us reference of time and space. But the artist is not interested at all in that kind of light.Some time ago, Bruno Dubner started photographing the light penetrating his home at night, most certainly under the influence of vigil. The entire place turned into a dark room where light revealed several feelings and thoughts as well as created situations he never experienced before. He discovered they could only come clear to him under those circumstances where all lights where off and only the presence of rays penetrating the scene detonated a sensitive “domino effect”. He photographs doors, windows, walls; everything turns visible only because of the cars passing by in the street providing some kind of luminal source randomly. Dubner is also interested in the moonlight through the shades or just the lights coming out of the computer; everything is subtle. His Rolleiflex 6 x 6 cameras are his main company during those nights of intense vigil; long periods of exposure that in some cases could be of almost eight hours, bring out the result we appreciate in his “abstract photographs”.What we mainly see is nothing but white, nothing but the process itself where the light creates abstract images. Even when those objects photographed could be easily recognized in a normal situation, the way in which Dubner´s camera captures them, make those objects represent figures we could relate to no certain referent at all. There is where the spectator gets involved with the artist’s work, because people could play with Dubner´s photographs whether using their fantasy to see whatever they want to see and being the ones who determine what is represented by the purity of white, or they could try to discover the real shape the artist hide behind white’s mysterious veil.

Ruud van Empel

Desire

http://www.ruudvanempel.nl/site/

May 2007

Ruud van Empel was born in Breda, The Netherlands, in 1958. If there’s a place in the world that ever gave humanity the most remarkable examples of creativity, talent and artistic skills, that would be The Netherlands. Dutch and Flemish artists started a tradition back in the XIV century that competed with the most important exponents of the Italian Renaissance, and never stopped ever since: Bosch, Bouts, the Van Eyck brothers, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Van Doesburg, De Kooning, Mondrian. The list of talented artists is overwhelming. If all of them have something in common, in my humble opinion, I think that would be the exquisite way in which they combine colors, the brightness of the images given by new techniques such as oil (which they created), the high quality in every detail and the realistic representation mostly in clothes that was never achieved before. And these are characteristics that for sure we could find in Rud van Empel´s art.Rudd van Empel worked in the “art industry” all his life; he worked in theater and graphics as a designer, as well as in the film industry. But nothings seemed to be more powerful that his love for photography, and back in the nineties he started experimenting with black and white images and finally introducing color. Color is such an important issue in his production because van Empel created scenarios (most of them organized in series) of extraordinary richness in details such as the ones his ancestors would create in the Flemish gardens they painted where hundreds of different kinds of plants could be identified. The artist, instead of using oil, which helps to make something real come alive, instead, he paints the photographs. There’s no way an image could get more real than that and even though, we are still facing magic. Because no matter how vivid the image appears to us, we are in presence of an illusion and the artist becomes the biggest illusionist of all when we believe in what we see.The artist himself highlighted some topics he is always interesting in bringing out in his works: innocence, fantasy and beauty. But what about desire? Is there any? Well, I guess desire is always there somehow. I’m referring to that primitive impulse, that inner and always necessary flame that makes the artist feel before calculating any movement; then the procedure could be methodic but once that “something” from inside generated its first movement. Then, as a “domino effect” the creation process begins.Rudd van Empel is concerned about perfection (once again, just as his ancestors), therefore, he manipulates and generates an interesting interaction between the possibilities technology brings and the never ending power of the most subtle paints, to create that perfect, fantastic, mysterious characters that inhabit his stories. Landscapes and children, animals and forests, beautiful women and babies, the wild and the “civilized”, sharing the same environment as if possible. Probably some kind of heaven the artist creates; desire is involved in that choices, even if it is in an unconscious way, desire must be the engine. Those “heavenly feelings”, as van Empel himself defines them, probably reflect something he always wanted, something that belongs to his deepest desires.I believe imagination could be a very powerful thing; scary sometimes and some others such a lovely compensation within this crazy world we are living in. Imagination could save us from getting lost in reality. Imagination makes us dream while we are awake, and if combined with those desires we have inside and we set them free once in a while (when we permit ourselves to be kids again), it could be extraordinary. Art invites us to create that imaginary situation. When Rudd van Empel chooses children to play the leading roles, which is in most of the cases, that primitive impulse of desire, that feeling that everything is possible turns into something concrete. Fantasy has no limits and invades the territory that belongs to reality. And we enjoy those scenes created by artists like van Empel because we get a chance to be as naïf, innocent and fresh as those kids staring at us; at least for a moment.María Carolina Baulo