This new chapter of Urbanautica editorial “The Sense of Nature” introduces for Manfrotto School of Xcellence some terrific shots of the Belgian artist Karin Borghouts. Her gaze becomes itself a “builder” of places that tell the relationship between reality and the viewer rather than some kind of staged nature, subjected to a mere tool of composition. References to art history, to painting, and to set design, help to fuel this kind of unsolvable riddle, between indisputable truths and illusions, between the pure perception and the certainty of being part of a well-known world.
Skeleton © Karin Borghouts, 2009, series ‘Study items’
«Every photograph represents history. It points back to what ever existed somewhere in space and time. As an extra layer of meaning I have photographed the relicts of life which is a metaphor for photography itself. Photography is for me the art of playing with memory. It triggers an associative reaction between the photograph and the images which we already have in mind from before. Skeletons are the most perfect sculptures. Nature needed thousands of years to perfect them. Nature as our tutor of art. What remains of these bones is the photograph, a new item in my archive of the mind.»
Flower © Karin Borghouts, 2009, series ‘Study items’
«Nothing more meaningfull and cliché as a flower. I photographed a series of flowers made in the early twenties for educational and scientific purposes. The photo, which is the flattened frame of these sculptures, looks like a drawing or a painting. By using a pink background colour, they reveal their erotic and sensible character, more than they do in real. It is a transformation into a field far from its instructional goal. Can photography connect this flower back to what the sense is of nature?»
Demonstration room © Karin Borghouts, 2009, series ‘The Show’
It seems as if we live to learn. We have to teach others what we learned. Knowledge streams through us and gets coloured. It happens in a classroom. A demonstration room. In closed séances the knowledge is presented. In the arena. On an altar in front of dissecting glances.
All copyright remains with photographer Karin Borghouts