Urban Household – cité de l’image – CLERVAUX

My series Urban Household will be on show in Clervaux in the frame of Cité de l’image: Photography in public space

17 September 2014 – 16 September 2015

Clerveaux – Cité de l’image
Arcades II | Montée de l’église

Beitrag _Clervaux

 

The “Jardins” have developed from the year 2000 onwards within the context of the initiative “Jardins … à suivre” in collaboration with the programme INTERREG III A WLL, i.e. with the Natural Parks of Wallonia, of Lorraine and of Luxembourg.

The traditional idea of gardens (jardin) refers very often to a surface, limited to plants, vegetables or herbs, for the use of alimentation, if even for aesthetic or scientific use.

The “Jardins” of Clervaux are places of creativity under the open sky, spread out over the whole city. Photographic images are hung in large scale open-air, in the centre of the town and in the surrounding area.

Urban Household is shown at the Arcades II.

Further on show are works of Laurent Chéhère – Flying Houses and Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek – The World We Live In.

For more information: Clerveaux – Cité de l’image

 

 

Julia Willms’ landscape images show coastal areas made up of the finest sand dunes, on which waves crush and break into foam. A skylight is a source of dazzling light, which wanders through the room, creating shadows that make the walls look more three-dimensional than they are. The roof, which covers everything, is supported not by rock faces, but merely by load-bearing elements. Washing lines – bathed in a golden light – partition the sky into strips… One’s gaze glides over the reflective surface of the lake, the shore of which is populated with trees, as well as small houses, aligning their windows to the opposite shore, right up to the edge of the bath…

The word “urban” promises a broad spectrum of meanings, but virtually always in connection with the city. The urban is equated with construction design, cultural diversity: distinct residential areas, with corresponding subcultures, lend the overall picture the promise of a certain advantage in terms of development options when compared with its counterpart, the rural.

Human perception, however, is pivotal. It declares an environment as functional, defines urbanity as a quality of life. Man fills the space, with his desires, visions, wants… But what if this is not the case? In Julia Willms’ digital collages, open landscapes occupy the closed room. The eyes of the viewer are beguiled by a seductive idyll, which upon closer inspection, however, takes on increasingly surreal characteristics. What was expected to be natural is in fact artificial, the inside is outside, the vast expanse appears limited, proximity lies in the far distance. Urbanity – structural substance – surrounds nature, quietly, silently, peacefully. This entanglement does not appear disturbing: the landscape within the house becomes the counterculture of the familiar, the architectonic frame becomes the living space of another, albeit usual, world.

 

Text: A. Meyer, Clervaux – cité de l’image

Translation: Claire Weyland

[nggallery id=21]

Scroll to top