The hazy bourgeois paradise of conventional thought

work in progress

My background as a cognitive psychologist makes that I think that what we see and experience is profoundly made up of association of memory and reference to metaphor. A construct that is always in relation to and in negotiation with otherness. Our memory and notion to metaphor is therewith not a constant factor but something that changes upon the -shared- experiences we have during life and how these experiences are conditioned.

In the series ‘The hazy bourgeois paradise of conventional thought’, I let off the concept of conditioned memory by picturing motifs that relate to symbolism, sameness and liminality to stir up the realm of metaphor and meaning. By making use photopolymer gravure with its rich tone and texture and the use of photographic techniques such as dazzle, grain, odd exposure and camera artefacts, the aesthetics of these cliché motifs in the pictures are being set in a hazy, displaced and ambiguous borderland. The works are no special pleas, nor denials to metaphorical thinking and meaning. It’s a modest and serene aesthetic built onto the dominant ostentatious current of the platitude.