Flor Maesen. If Only They Knew What a Body Can Do

For the last two years, after commencing my studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, I have been working hard at developing a very personal interpretation of ultimate beauty. This ideal has become something of an obsession to me, and this has found its way into the pictures, colouring their mood and the way they address the viewer.

I mostly try to make autonomous works which don’t need other pictures, text or explanation to give them content. They are supposed to affect the viewers; not to draw them into deliberation.

Contrary to the medium’s original use, my aim is not to capture reality as it is, but to create my own kind of reality. A reality of (land)scapes and bodies, in which strangeness is the norm—both the landscapes and the bodies continually cross the threshold of the animate and inanimate—while nevertheless remaining oddly calming and familiar.

 

Flor Maesen (1995, Belgium) has been studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent for four years. Last year his nudes were featured for the first time at the BredaPhoto International Photofestival. Currently he is working on his graduation project, in which he sets out to capture the mysteries of the mountains.