Simple Present #131 (Madrid), 2007

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Simple Present #495 (London), 2010

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Simple Present #514 (Mumbai), 2011

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Simple Present #512 (Mumbai), 2011

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Simple Present #209 (Cape Town), 2008

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Simple Present #489 (Shanghai), 2010

all images © BERT DANCKAERT

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Simple Present is an ongoing series started in 2006 by Belgian photographer BERT DANCKAERT. For this series he traveled to big cities, preferably megacities, throughout the world in order to document what he calls the ‘heedless space in a global context‘.

From a formal perspective, colors, geometric shapes, and spatial relationships, each image offers a different meaning and interpretation of the elements that surround us and plunges the viewer into the matter of diverse surfaces, patterns and orders within the ordinary space. This work reminds us of the work of certain abstract painters.

The bizarre cityscapes of BERT DANCKAERT deal with the same paradox of abstractive simplicity and a complexity of meaning and metaphor. DANCKAERTs still lives breathe a superficial flavour, a strangeness that is found in the familiar. Coincidental installations of sidewalks, walls and street furniture refer more to minimalist art than to conventions of street photography. In these absurd scenarios a recognizable, all too banal reality appears stage-set, props and trompe-l’oeil included, while the actors are absent. – INGE HENNEMAN, curator of the Antwerp Photo Museum

And good news: Simple Present by BERT DANCKAERT will be on view at Stieglitz 19, Antwerp from 26 January (opening 26 January) to 3 March 2013

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