Jodogne`s subject lies on the horizon or just beyond it. You can virtually feel the photographer standing on tiptoe to bring a bit more horizon into vision. Whatever appears in the foreground is hardly relevant, in fact, but the horizon is always there, even at the glimpse between the trees or in the distance, announced by a pole, a crane, a tower. The horizon is the unavoidable cosmic division between mouldable land and elusive sky. In the one-sided fight between the merciless flat horizon and every conceivable kind of mast, tower, chimney, pylon, the photographer shows how low and flat the manmade environment does remain. In the foreground the camera is invariably looking for plains, side wings, perspective lines and series that direct the attention towards the horizon or give the distance towards it a certain scale. On the horizon lies the the goal of the trip and an ever-new destination if the present one disillusions. This is where the world appears and disappear.
Interspace as a Training Ground for Changes
Jodogne`s photographs built landscapes, sites marked by human interventions, yet with nature ever-present. Such sites are no longer natural fact, but a dimension of culture. Like historic cities this kind of landscape forms a piece of collective cultural heritage. Like cities, landscapes absorb history and become the bearers of a collective memory. They have time on their hands -form a relatively stable support on which people, roads ,houses, economies, travel and leave their traces. Jodogne`s built landscapes belong to the interspace. Not only do they lie outside the recognised nature reserves, they are also situated outside the acknowledged historic frame of cities or villages and outside the listed enclaves of protected landscapes. They are commonplaces, so to speak. They remain outside the vision of conservation, of monuments as well as of nature. A genius loci seems wasted on them. Most of them are not regarded as places , but rather as soil, territory or even empty land, no man`s land, wasteland. Something that can not be destination in it`s own right - the latter lying beyond the horizon- but an interspace, distance between two destinations.
Andre Loeckx
Deferment, Subversion, Coincidence. A brief guide to Changing Landscapes
Lucas Jodogne`s Landscapes avoid centrality or apotheosis. The selection shows a clear preference for fringes: borders and flanks of areas, the other side, deserted end points, fallow land. An understandable choice. More so than the established center, border areas are highly susceptible to tension and change. At times an unsightly fence has to express a sharp environmental contrast, or, on the contrary, a distinct border may signal a difference that has been minimized. Disproportion of this kind promotes all manner of border blurring and border enhancement. In some situations, adjacent regimes ignore all stable borders. Brutal border violation and environmental violence thus bend the landscape. When, however, enemy spaces explicitly become separate banks, side and other side, their border war may veer into exciting -or funny, but tolerant- juxtaposition of differences. It is common for regimes to overlap in fringe areas and for any one system fail to dominate the other one. Such twilight zones engender ambivalence that incite to a redefinition of space, in the same way that natural border areas -swamps, estuaries,banks- spark rich ecological interactions. Border areas hold fallow land too: where a regime becomes blurred or suddenly starts playing up with no replacement at hand, in the shade of a dominant system, in the no man`s land between two incompatible spaces. By such deferment, new space for another articulation is created: driven models for radically new space, minimal articulation for temporary uses, forms of disuse.
Lucas Jodogne
Born 30th of september 1959 Hasselt, Belgium
Individual exhibitions
2004
Les Brasseur, Liege (B) Mois de la photo “Chasser le Naturelle”
2002
CC Hasselt, De doos, “In the Node” (B)
CC Strombeek, Bookpresentation and Show “Urban Arboretum” (B)
2001
Andre Simoens gallery, Knokke “In the Node” (B)
1999
Substation gallery, Singapore “The Bodiless Dragon”
Rodolphe Janssen gallery, Brussels (B)
1998
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Australia “Divide and Multiply”
Artchetype gallery, Brussels “Brussel” (B)
Eve-N-Yet gallery, Leuven (B) “Urban Arboretum”
1996
Toile cirée, Brussels (B) “Topobelgica”
1994
Museum voor Fotografie, Antwerp (B) “Transitions”
1993
Galla gallery, Bucarest, Roemenia “Topobelgica”
1992
Passage K*, Eigenbrakel (B)
1991
The gallery, Brussels (B) “Dorre aarde”
1985
“Fotografencircuit”, Antwerp (B) traveling exhibition
Joint exhibitions
2008
Fractions of time / place, De Markten, Brussels (B)
2006
Landscape Open, St Lucas gallery Ghent, (B)
2004
De Weg van Brueghel, Palais de Justice, Brussels (B)
De muzen herdacht CC Muze , Limburg (B)
Frammenti' in the Academie Belgica, Rome
2003
International Architecture Biennale, Rotterdam, Holland “Mobility”
Bunkerhotel, Archetype Brussel, (B)
“MD: The metropolitan Diamond of Europe”
Johan De Vos, Hallepoort, Brussels(B)
“Centre-Centrum”
Archetype, Brussels (B) “Color”
2002
Art & Com, Park Nysdam, Brussels
“Paysages Urbain, Paysages Humain”,
Plumblossoms Gallery at MITA month of Photography, Singapore, “In the Node”
2001
Espace Nord 251 at Thurm & Taxis, Brussels (B) “Ici et maintenant”
Orion gallery, Ostend
“Dépaysagé”(B)
2000
KBC gallery, Brussels “Brussels by light”(B)
Centrum Brussel
2000
“Uitnodiging aan de stad “3e Art biënnale, Louvain la Neuve (B)
Botanique “Brussels (een stad) in foto’s”(B)
1999
Lousiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Humlebæk (DK) “Cities on the move 4”
Hayward Gallery, London (GB) “Cities on the move 5”
KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (Finland)
Singapore Art Museum, (SG) “Nokia Art Show”
The Art Gallery of Western Australia ‘Imagining: Art of the 20 th century’
1998
Elzenveld, Antwerp “TopoBelgica”
1997
Museum Mertens-Kelens, Leuven “Nature Morte??”
Cicada Gallery, Singapore
Touring exhibition “Nature +” organised by the Kunstbank (B)
C C Strombeek (B)
C C Leopoldsburg (B)
Maidstone Library Gallery (GB)
North brook Photo Gallery (GB)
Ramsgate Library Gallery (GB)
Kent institute of Art & Design, Rochester (GB)
1995
Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Ghent
1994
Andre Simoens gallery, Knokke “Altos verdes”
Fondation Hamesse, Brussels.
1993
Gemeentehuis Etterbeek, “Mariage A4”
1987
Mois de la Photo, Liege.
1984
Centrum de Ceder, Deinze
XYZ gallery, Ghent
1983
William Wauters gallery
Publications
Individual
Transitions Pandora
The bodiless Dragon Pandora
Urban Arboretum Merz
Joint
Nature morte? Johan Pas ~ Ludion edition
Architecture of Fear David Turnbull ~ Princeton GB
Jaarboek Architectuur Vlaanderen Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap 1996
Buiten & Binnen Johan Pas ~ Koninklijke vereniging voor Natuur- en stedenschoon
agenda Vlaamse Gemeenschap 2001
Catalogue
Nature morte??
Liege, Mois de la photo
Kask gent 25 jaar
The unseen Eye Cicada Gallery
Cities on the move 5 Hayward Gallery
Cities on the move 6 KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art
Brussels by light, KBC gallery
Nokia Art show SAM 2000
Uitnodiging aan de stad , Brussel 2000
La conscience du monde, 3e Art biënnale LLN
Dépaysagé Orion gallery
Magazine
Singapore Architect #201 ~ Lucas Jodogne captures the bodiless Dragon
Art Asia Pacific issue 25 ~ representation as detour; three anecdotes about singapore Art
Singapore Architect #206 ~ Expectant Land
Taking the pictures is only the end stage of a process started much earlier. As a photographer working with color negative I found out gradually that my influence on developing processes and other manipulations have very little or unsatisfactory result. Interfering with the developing process of the negative or with the production of a picture on print is only limited possible. But it is really my intention to have impact on my Photographs. I want too choose how they will look and what influence they have on viewers as much as I decide too frame and take them. Not so much as too create a look but to do justice to the things I want to translate or tell to viewers. As such I have used color filters and polarizers to reach my goals. Only to find out the same thing; After all, I have very limited ways of altering the image itself unlike Black & White Photography.
Strategy
How can I have this impact on the image without loosing that element of reality that I consider as a must?
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