Gilbert Fastenaekens

Gilbert Fastenaekens was born in 1955 in Brussels and has been living in Bouillon since 2009.
Quickly recognized for his photographic work on urban night landscapes, he took part in the DATAR Photographic Mission in France in 1984.
His work accomplished during this period was gathered in the books ‘Nocturne’ and ‘Essai pour une archéologie imaginaire’. "At night, urban topography is left to its own devices. It is the unlit stage of an enigmatic opera, the abandoned decor of a monumental play from which the actors have been banished. Everything seems contained within a temporary halt. This distance from the usual tumult deserves to be experienced. Everything is still. The stage and its spectators seem to be intimately joined until the first glimmers of morning, when the rhythmic coming and going of civilization reestablishes its domain". In 1987, during a photographic mission in Belfort (Les quatre saisons du territoire), he added to the idea of a landscape restricted to a small perimeter, the strength of an intimate and contemplative experience, which reached its full expression in 1988 within the delimited area of a forest in Champagne-Ardennes entitled ‘Noces’. Meanwhile, from 1990 to 1996, Gilbert Fastenaekens continued his work on Brussels, published under the title ‘Site’ (ARP Editions, 1996), leading us to questioning the deeper meaning of the city and its development, as well as its foundation and its inner logic. In 2000, with ‘Site II’, he deepened his experiment in colour, starting with an alphabet of simplistic and elementary forms composed of semi-detached facades which had never been drawn to be shown and were related to construction rather than architecture. They eventually became a landmark, a point of reference, a lighthouse in the city, while waiting for an attached. Their obtuse strengths and sculpturally photographic “beauty” ended up mixing themselves to create uncertain worlds, if not disjointed sentences which talk about urbanism and allow a reading of the city, from the scenery to the stage.

Since 2006, Gilbert Fastenaekens has also begun a video investigation.
In the video installation ‘Libre de ce monde’, he used his ability of observation to non-intrusively capture in stills focused on single person, pairs or small groups, a ‘demonstration’ as ordinary as it is spectacular: laughter. Declined in its many variations, individual or collegial, from the most muffled to the wildest, powerful or exhausting, but also and maybe most importantly, from the happiest to the most painful. Uncontrollable by nature, this outpouring, even surges from the depth of human beings, which can lead the viewer to laugh, but can also embarrass him as if he was attending the most indecent show. In ‘Vis-à-Vis’ (shot in Milan), events of urban banalities, simple everyday gestures and portraits subjected to time alternate on five side-by-side video screen: the inner theatricality is exposed to the test of time, exposure, complacency, sometimes in the difficulty of facing the silence. Muffled poetry exudes from these simultaneously shown sequences, like haikus, capturing a multitude of instants that create the writing of life, expressing what it really is right now, in the present time, in connection with the viewer.
The artist is represented by Les Filles du Calvaire gallery in Paris.