FOTOTECA SIRACUSANA
PHOTOGALLERY - FOTOGRAFIA VINTAGE - BIBLIOTECA TEMATICA - CAMERA OSCURA B&W - DIDATTICA
OPEN CALL
PETER H WATERSHOOT
BELGIUM
SUNSET MEMORY
The photographs by Peter H. Waterschoot have been published as books; ‘AT THE SKIN OF TIME ’ (2018), ‘SUNSET MEMORY’ (2021), but also in different Belgian magazines.
The artist has exhibited mainly in Belgium.
2021 Peter H.Waterschoot made his museum debute in the museum of photography of Charleroi (BE); and having gained a solid take on his own oeuvre he is now preparing for international debutes.
Peter H. Waterschoot (°1969) is based in Ghent, Belgium. His work is a joust with time and texture, it invites you to lose yourself in respectively: reverie, melancholy, lust, discomfort, detachment; an enigmatic, ominous, comforting magical realism.
It is an oeuvre that is carefully stripped of time and space markers. Hotels, curtains, lost glory: all fixed values in Waterschoot’s photography, depicting the moment after, or before the event. As in a Janus look on the current of time.
Nostalgia or dystopia? We observe a cinematographic dreamworld built with elements from the real world; with references to literature, film and music. The photowork questions our place as a human species in a fast-changing world.
Waterschoot investigates a wild chromatic spectrum, from saffron gold to electric blue. His work is an ungoing aesthetic investigation with strong meditative undercurrent.
Il lavoro di Peter Waterschoot si basa sulla rimozione di alcuni elementi dalla realtà per
inserirli in una realtà parallela e onirica.
La memoria del tramonto ruota attorno all'idea di migrazione (e mutazione) di elementi culturali; una stanza giapponese illuminata da neon blu a Bruxelles o un Bierstube-Hotel tedesco a Tokyo; elementi kitsch si fondono e formano un'estetica fuori dal comune.
Waterschoot lavora con questa idea di viaggio continuo, racconta storie senza troppa storia. Il suo lavoro funziona come un rotolo cinese, una mano arrotola, l'altra srotola, vediamo un taglio verticale, connesso sia al passato che al futuro. Un passato che sta scivolando via davanti ai nostri occhi e un futuro già presente.
Sarebbe possibile avere nostalgia del futuro?
Sunset Memory è un bagno in una malinconia color neon. Andiamo alla deriva attraverso i neon blu ghiacciati e finiamo in un flusso ardente di immagini rosse e gialle, come la lava, che evocano un processo di liquefazione o un processo di solidificazione.
Un riferimento all'idea di mutazione costante nel corso della storia. Ci sono ombre minacciose e distopiche nel suo mondo onirico, ma Waterschoot scaccia il destino.
Una protagonista femminile, forse un oracolo, fa da apripista in questo percorso tra passato e futuro. Sentiamo che questo mondo sta perdendo i suoi tessuti molli sociali, ed è caduto in preda alla solitudine, ma tuttavia "la solitudine è la migliore medicina per la solitudine “ quindi l'opera di Waterschoot tende a presagi positivi.
Sunset Memory revolves around the idea of migration ( and mutation) of cultural elements; a neon blue lit Japanese room in Brussels or a German Bierstube-hotel in Tokio; kitsch-elements merge and form an off-center aesthetics.
Waterschoot works with this idea on continuous road-trips, het is telling stories without too much of a story. His work functions as a Chinese scroll, one hand is rolling up, the other unrolling, we see a vertical cut, connected to both past and future, A past that is gliding away before our eyes and a future already present.
Would it be possible, being nostalgic for the future ?
Sunset Memory is bathing in a neon colored melancholia. We drift through ice cold blue neon and end up in a burning stream of red and yellow images, like lava, evoking either a liquifying proces or solidifying process. A reference to the idea of constant mutation throughout history. There are ominous, dystopian shadows in his oniric world, but Waterschoot casts away doom.
A female protagonist, an oracle perhaps, leads the way on this path between past and future. We sense that this world is loosing its social soft tissue, and has fallen prone to loneliness, but nevertheless ‘solitude is the best medicine for loneliness’ - an thus the oeuvre has a comforting feeling to it.
