Dirk Braeckman’s work brings stillness to today’s steady tide of images. Working with analogue photography, towards the end of the 1980s, he found a visual language of his own that focuses on the act of viewing and reflects on the status of the image. The artist explores the boundaries of his medium and challenges photographic conventions. The camera’s flash reflects off the surface of the subject, the texture of walls, curtains, carpets and posters. His images show anonymous subjects from his immediate surroundings. Stripped of anecdote, the stories they suggest are entirely open. The artist shows empty rooms in which time appears to stand still, elements of interchangeable interiors or human figures that stand only for presence – all separate from any specific identity, place, time or emotion. Intimacy and distance combine in Braeckman’s photographic images to make a private, secluded world whose meaning remains undefined.

Dirk Braeckman creates his images in the darkroom. Experiment is crucial to both their registration by the camera and their subsequent processing. The exposure, manipulation and development of negative and photographic paper consistently result in new and unique images. Grain, spots, cropping and flattening of perspective resist an immediate reading or interpretation of his work. Over and underexposure and working in grey tones heighten the iconic character of his images.

In 2017, the Belgian Pavilion in Venice is presenting a series of monumental prints on baryta paper. The unique, analogue prints are made from negatives from Braeckman’s archive, with the artist sometimes creating multiple images from the same source. Although some works also use colour and were made digitally, the exhibition focuses on monumental work in grey tones, produced in Braeckman’s darkroom.

These artworks pose a challenge to today’s ubiquitous image consumption. They are recognisable, yet flirt with representation, abstraction and the reality of what is shown. Braeckman is not interested in photographic editions or in registering moments that document fragments of reality. He looks for open images with a special charge, which withhold as well as divulge information, giving them the power to hold the viewer’s gaze.

Dirk Braeckman has spent the past 25 years developing a gradual and impressive portfolio. Working with the medium of photography, he occupies a highly particular place and position within the visual arts. He has taken part in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally, such as recent solo shows at LE BAL (Paris), De Pont (Tilburg), De Appel (Amsterdam), S.M.A.K. (Ghent) and ROSEGALLERY (Santa Monica, CA). In Belgium, his work has recently been featured at BOZAR in Brussels (2013), at M - Museum Leuven (2011) and at Zeno X Gallery in Antwerp (2015). Braeckman’s works are part of important private and public collections around the world, including in FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais (Dunkirk), Sammlung Goetz (Munich), De Pont (Tilburg), Fondation Nationale d’Art Contemporain (Paris), Central Museum (Utrecht) and Musée d’Art Contemporain et Moderne (Strasbourg). There are several publications on his artistic practice and oeuvre. Dirk Braeckman has been represented by Zeno X Gallery in Antwerp since 1999.