INNERVISIONS

PHOTO WORKS BY PETER PUKLUS, MERETTE UITERWAAL, DENI HORVATIC   

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As part of the 9th PhotoBrussels Festival, this exhibition brings together three photo artists with different geographic, social and artistic backgrounds. Each of them has developed a specific creative style, based on their personal experiences and reflections on life. They have never met each other in person, nor has their work been shown together. The exhibition creates an intimate trialogue between them, where their voices can be heard  individually but also interacting with each other, to stimulate the visual and intellectual interest of the viewer. 

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Peter Puklus, born 1980 in Cluj-Napoca (Romania), lives and works in Budapest. He studied photography at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) and media design at École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (ENSCI) in Paris. His work has been widely shown in Hungary and internationally for almost 20 years. 

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In two consecutive work series, he deals with pre-established family roles and specifically the archetypes of the  father and the mother, based on his own family experience. Executed in brilliant black and white prints, these photos reveal his deep emotions triggered by the joy and the responsibilities of his new role. The first series, Hero Mother, was published in a beautiful artist book in 2021 and shown in Brussels in 2022.  

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In his new series, Hero Father, created after the mother had left the family, he focuses on the male figure. The father’s quest for authenticity and self-expression breaks its way. Having to struggle with new challenges, he tries to combine his domestic and professional duties, but never really succeeds, torn between fantasy and  reality. The horse mounted warrior is juxtaposed with a knight dressed in armor that can never protect the fragile nature of its bearer. The woman is seen both as a vital force and a source of trouble, directing the fate of men driven by desire. The children become subjects full of vital energy, ready to challenge the father, who then no  longer needs to be the caretaker. At that point, his former heroism transforms into his true nature composed of  ambition, anger and frustration, but also softness and fragility. 

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Merette Uiterwaal, born in 1990 in Amsterdam, is a visual artist primarily working with photography. Colour  blindness, a condition affecting only few people, provides her with a unique perspective on the world. Instead of a hundred shades of red, she sees only four, blending into brown, yellow, and orange. Colours appear to her as muted and grayish. Her photographic style straddles the line between abstraction and figuration. Her work is based on recognizable objects, but the movement and blur in her images transform them into abstract shapes. This serves as a metaphor for her condition, visually reflecting the distortion of reality in her work. 

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The new series "Grey Healer" is the fruit of her artistic endeavor to delve into colour perception, to explore how  subjective and individual it can be. "What do you see?" she is often asked, and with these works she answers in  a thought-provoking manner, inviting viewers to contemplate the nuances and complexities of perception. Each art work is accompanied by a legend that explains her unique way of seeing and interpreting the colours on display. We are encouraged to compare our own perception to that of the artist and to consider differences and  similarities that may arise. 

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The visuals for her light boxes are derived from photographs of flowers, meticulously transformed into abstract  compositions. By stripping away recognizable forms, Merette emphasizes the vibrant colours that lie within  nature's intricate designs. The light boxes invite us to immerse in a world of dreams and imagination. Each piece  is both an art work and a functional light object that can be switched on, transforming space by creating a dynamic interplay between light and colour. 

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Deni Horvatic, born 1991 in Čakovec, Croatia, has been working with the Croatian fashion brand XD Xenia Design since 2019. He won the “Marina Viculin” award 2020 for extraordinary achievements in the field of Croatian  photography. He lives in Čakovec where he works as an independent photographer, video and CGI programmer. 

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His SCAN series was presented at UNSEEN Amsterdam 2023 and photo Basel 2024 by nüüd.berlin gallery, who kindly supports this part of the exhibition as well. In his life-size photographs of scenes from everyday life, the artist removes the distance between the environment and the subject by choosing a particular perspective. Shot from below, these portraits hide as much as they reveal, denying us a glimpse on the part of the body we most immediately associate with identity, namely the face.  

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The best portraits give us the intimate feeling of being face to face with the portrayed. But the constraints of the physical world, even with all modern technology, prevent us from fully uniting with each other. These faceless bodies also raise the question of whether we actually have an individual in front of us at all. Apparent proximity becomes distance again, a sign of our times… 

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Text: Robert Klotz