|
Ronny Delrue works in the twilight zone between figurative and abstract art, and is particularly fascinated by cognitive oppositions such as presence and absence, beautiful and ugly, knowing and forgetting, past and future. Although he often chooses his own memory as a theme – to record and investigate personal recollections and events – his work is less of a literal translation of personal emotions than a reflection on them. He wants his drawings and paintings not only to show something or to make it known, but above all else to reveal what is missing, what was lost or was always concealed. This fascination with what is ephemeral and transient recurs in this series of heliogravures based on old family photographs that the artist conceived in 2007. The series emerged from an arbitrary collection of prints purchased at flea markets. They are typical family snapshots, yet at the same time they are mirrors of a bygone reality to which importance is no longer attached. Delrue has also partly erased or obliterated the figures using Chinese ink and pencil, which further stresses the ghostliness of the past. The deliberate decision to enlarge the photographs makes the traces of the past all the more painful, almost grotesque.
