Filip Dujardin - Built / Build - exhibition at DUČB
We are greatly honored that this exhibition allows us to present the work of Belgian artist Filip Dujardin as the first in the Czech Republic.
Originally an artistic photographer specializing in architectural photography, he began in 2007 to dedicate himself to a free series of a kind of fictional world. Through digital collage, based on photographs of existing buildings in his hometown of Ghent and its surroundings, he creates surreal images of structures that are convincingly placed in landscapes but are difficult to realize. In Dujardin's images, which ignore the laws of physics and defy gravity and material, we encounter abstract sculptural forms, strange interiors, complexes of buildings, and solitary structures. At first glance, it is entirely ordinary architecture, which reveals its absurdity only when we notice inappropriate details.
Filip Dujardin was born in 1971 and studied photography and art history (with a specialization in architecture) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, where he graduated in 1995. He has had countless exhibitions worldwide, and his work is represented in numerous domestic and foreign collections.
The author explores architecture as a form of sculpture in time and space. He remarkably manages to work with typologies and archetypes typical of architecture, and with minimal shifts, he transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. These activities can also be viewed as a certain critique of existing architectural production, as well as a vision of a fantastical artist's world, in which he contemplates what emotions a building can evoke in the public.
The author himself comments that his limit in creating these images is the thin line between reality and unrealism regarding how far he can go without slipping into science fiction. Thus, unrealism becomes his path.
In the course of investigating the essence of architecture, Dujardin gradually becomes interested in how to translate his two-dimensional ideas into three-dimensional installations. Pixels have thus been replaced by bricks, and the author begins his research into uncompromising parameters of reality with architecture as a sculptural form in time and space, moving from the world of virtual images of unlimited possibilities.
While in photographic collages he touched on specific locations, in installations he seeks universality. Using bricks and mortar, and sometimes concrete objects, he creates architectural structures in space, drawing us into a poetic environment saturated with questions of what is or what could be. He strips architectural archetypes of functionality and identity, placing them in new mutual relationships. Dujardin sees architecture as a buffer between two places, requiring a certain activity. For example, passing through something, above, or below something, to restore the connection between people and place. The architectural elements then stand in a certain mutual conflict.
Filip Dujardin’s work moves from fiction to reality and back to fiction. He asks questions about what architecture is, as well as what an image is? What is the representation of architecture, and how is architecture perceived by a specific medium?
The concept for this exhibition in České Budějovice, BUILT / BUILD, brings a certain shift, in which Dujardin is less concerned with Belgian architectural culture and more with the universal process of building structures, architectural typology in general, and construction as a result of the accumulation of historical references. Here, he immerses us into an environment consisting not only of a selection of photographs but also a sculptural, spatial intervention that becomes a certain three-dimensional translation of the themes he explores in his pictorial collages.
Originally an artistic photographer specializing in architectural photography, he began in 2007 to dedicate himself to a free series of a kind of fictional world. Through digital collage, based on photographs of existing buildings in his hometown of Ghent and its surroundings, he creates surreal images of structures that are convincingly placed in landscapes but are difficult to realize. In Dujardin's images, which ignore the laws of physics and defy gravity and material, we encounter abstract sculptural forms, strange interiors, complexes of buildings, and solitary structures. At first glance, it is entirely ordinary architecture, which reveals its absurdity only when we notice inappropriate details.
Filip Dujardin was born in 1971 and studied photography and art history (with a specialization in architecture) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, where he graduated in 1995. He has had countless exhibitions worldwide, and his work is represented in numerous domestic and foreign collections.
The author explores architecture as a form of sculpture in time and space. He remarkably manages to work with typologies and archetypes typical of architecture, and with minimal shifts, he transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. These activities can also be viewed as a certain critique of existing architectural production, as well as a vision of a fantastical artist's world, in which he contemplates what emotions a building can evoke in the public.
The author himself comments that his limit in creating these images is the thin line between reality and unrealism regarding how far he can go without slipping into science fiction. Thus, unrealism becomes his path.
In the course of investigating the essence of architecture, Dujardin gradually becomes interested in how to translate his two-dimensional ideas into three-dimensional installations. Pixels have thus been replaced by bricks, and the author begins his research into uncompromising parameters of reality with architecture as a sculptural form in time and space, moving from the world of virtual images of unlimited possibilities.
While in photographic collages he touched on specific locations, in installations he seeks universality. Using bricks and mortar, and sometimes concrete objects, he creates architectural structures in space, drawing us into a poetic environment saturated with questions of what is or what could be. He strips architectural archetypes of functionality and identity, placing them in new mutual relationships. Dujardin sees architecture as a buffer between two places, requiring a certain activity. For example, passing through something, above, or below something, to restore the connection between people and place. The architectural elements then stand in a certain mutual conflict.
Filip Dujardin’s work moves from fiction to reality and back to fiction. He asks questions about what architecture is, as well as what an image is? What is the representation of architecture, and how is architecture perceived by a specific medium?
The concept for this exhibition in České Budějovice, BUILT / BUILD, brings a certain shift, in which Dujardin is less concerned with Belgian architectural culture and more with the universal process of building structures, architectural typology in general, and construction as a result of the accumulation of historical references. Here, he immerses us into an environment consisting not only of a selection of photographs but also a sculptural, spatial intervention that becomes a certain three-dimensional translation of the themes he explores in his pictorial collages.
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