new publication coming may 2021
more tbc
soloshow No Road to Hotel Bellevue - October 15, 2020 until January 9, 2021 at DMW Gallery, Antwerp (B)
No Road to Hotel Bellevue is a total installation of a natural world in which all artworks are interwoven as organisms until they can no longer be disentangled. This coming together originates in the in-between space, the speculative space.
Border trees are trees that are planted at strategic locations in the landscape. They make visible certain transitions of national, community and property borders. Multiple administrations monitor the conservation of these trees. Governments are obliged by law to maintain, replant and protect them. In a changing geopolitical landscape, however, these trees often lose their function as cultural-historical bearers and merge into their environment as non-information. In fact, these days, the trees are just another thing in landscape having no idea they are a border.
Trees have been present on this planet for 370,000,000 years. They have fallen into invisibility because they are losing their function in the landscape to a new, fuller panorama of symbols and signs. Road-building, agriculture and urbanisation have a lot to do with this, but so do technological and industrial progress. Centuries ago, some trees functioned as visual elements in a landscape in order to orient ourselves.
For No Road to Hotel Bellevue, Dries Segers takes a first step in designing alternative cartographies. He merges symbols, signs and words, and has them engraved with a laser-cut technique in the frames of his artworks. Since their development, humans have expressed themselves in simplified drawings and symbols. It is from the same need that Segers incorporates this graphic language into his work.
Seeds (Allium)(Sweetgum)(Cucurbita)(Cyclanthera)
15,5 x 23cm, Archival Pigment Print, framed in black metal
Seeds are macro shots from my personal plant seed bank. These works are produced in an infinite edition. The distribution and their ever renewable life refers primarily to the seeds themselves, but also to photography as the most reproducible medium par excellence.
DRIES SEGERS No Road to Hotel Bellevue / Fungi / Never, Nowhere / 143 Folds / Burn our wings / A Circle, A Line, A Cross / When the fire / Responding Rain / Black Body () / Etudes Australes / Hits of Sunshine / Undecided Photographs / PUBLISHED Fungi / Seeing a rainbow / TEXT / INFO/CV
No Road to Hotel Bellevue
2020
Arch for Roadblocks and Lockdowns, 2020, 54x74x13cm, Silkscreen on 300gsm Canson Heritage, lasercutted frame in afzeliawood
Ask your hands to know the things they hold
Kae Tempest
Unattended Funerals, 2020, 54x74x13cm, Silkscreen on 300gsm Canson Heritage, lasercutted frame in afzeliawood
SUN
WATER
WIND
'Our companion, our other', VITRINE, Vogesenplatz, Basel (CH) 28 February - 17 july 2020 / photos: VITRINE, Basel / Nici Jost
(detail) Dear god and the red cat, 2020, 54x74x13cm, Silkscreen on 300gsm Canson Heritage, lasercutted frame in afzeliawood
Dear god and the red cat, 2020, 54x74x13cm, Silkscreen on 300gsm Canson Heritage, lasercutted frame in afzeliawood
The death, the wolf and the bird, 2020, 54x74x13cm, Silkscreen on 300gsm Canson Heritage, lasercutted frame in afzeliawood
The fossil gas and the parrots, 2020, 54x74x13cm, Silkscreen on 300gsm Canson Heritage, lasercutted frame in afzeliawood
The H; Hand sculpture, 2020, 12,7x17,7cm, Blue photochromic silkscreenprint on 250gsm Litho Demi Mat
The Stone; Hand sculpture, 2020, 12,7x17,7cm, Blue photochromic silkscreenprint on 250gsm Litho Demi Mat
Lichen; Hand sculpture, 2020, 12,7x17,7cm, Blue photochromic silkscreenprint on 250gsm Litho Demi Mat
The Codes; Hand sculpture, 2020, 12,7x17,7cm, Blue photochromic silkscreenprint on 250gsm Litho Demi Mat
The Branch; Hand sculpture, 2020, 12,7x17,7cm, Blue photochromic silkscreenprint on 250gsm Litho Demi Mat
THESE WORKS ONLY APPEAR IF THERE IS ENOUGH UV-LIGHT
TIME AND SPACE ARE ON THEIR SIDE
FUNGI
2019
Installation with 2 electric heatingsystems, POPPOSITIONS critical artfair, Tour à Plomb, Brussels, april 2019
In the autumn of 2019 I photographed fungi in Dudenpark, Brussels. Fungi are the oldest living species on our planet. They build and spread their communities across human borders, continents, laws ... They take over land without asking permission. They clean up toxic messes in disturbed landscapes and shake the land back to life to create liveable grounds for animals, plants and maybe humans. They have the power to transport energy between weaker and stronger trees, to keep forests alive or to kill them. Their spores are invisible and spread and spread and spread. “The uncontrolled lives of mushrooms are a gift — and a guide — when the controlled world we thought we had fails.”
(Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, ‘The Mushroom at the End of the World, On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins’, Princeton University Press, 2015)
The project consists of an installation and a publication. The accrochage shows a number of blow-ups of marcro-photographed fungi. The prints will appear and disappear according to the temperature in the room. Two heating systems are installed under the works to provide change. By a timing system the heaters will go on and off. The viewer will not be able to control what he sees. Each hour the images will be different showing and hiding parts of the work. The (un)natural process of appearance is accompanied by the responsibility, care and patience of the spectator.
FUNGI B005, 2019, 30x40cm, Black thermochromic on archival inkjetprint, frame in metal frame, mdf, unique
FUNGI B005, 2019, 30x40cm, Black thermochromic on archival inkjetprint, frame in metal frame, mdf, unique
FUNGI B002, 2019, 30x40cm, Black thermochromic on archival inkjetprint, frame in metal frame, mdf, unique
FUNGI C002, 2019, 30x40cm, Black thermochromic on archival inkjetprint, frame in wooden metal frame, mdf, unique
FUNGI C001, 2019, 30x40cm, Black thermochromic on archival inkjetprint, frame in wooden metal frame, mdf, unique
FUNGI C001, 2019, 30x40cm, Black thermochromic on archival inkjetprint, frame in wooden metal frame, mdf, unique
FUNGI B001, 2019, 30x40cm, Black thermochromic on archival inkjetprint, frame in metal frame, mdf, unique
FUNGI B005, 2019, 30x40cm, Black thermochromic on archival inkjetprint, frame in metal frame, mdf, unique
THESE WORKS ONLY APPEAR IF IT IS HOT ENOUGH
LET THE HEATWAVES ENTER
+ 1,5°C
YOU CAN ONLY SEE THEM IF THE CONDITION IS RIGHT
WAIT FOR IT OR LEAVE
FUNGI B004, 2019, 30x40cm, Black thermochromic on archival inkjetprint, frame in metal frame, mdf, unique
FUNGI (book)
2019
Title: FUNGI
Author: Dries Segers
36 pages, 42x28 cm
200 copies
design: Chloé D'hauwe & Ine Meganck
text: Hannah De Meyer
print: Stockmans, Duffel
ISBN 9789463883092
ORDER through e-mail OR at malenki.net, Copyright Bookshop, FOMU Bookshop, rile*
NEVER, NOWHERE
2018/2019
241 minutes’, cyanotype on unbleached cotton, wooden sticks, 150x225cm, 2018 / right: Caroline Van den Eynde & Denitsa Todorova
‘72 folds’, cyanotype on unbleached cotton, 150x196cm, 2019
‘241 minutes’, cyanotype on unbleached cotton, wooden sticks, 150x225cm, 2018
‘70 folds’, cyanotype on unbleached cotton, 150x226cm, 2019
143 FOLDS
2018
143 folds', 2018, cyanotype on cotton, 450 x 700 cm at 019, Gent (B)
The work '143 folds' was made site-specific for the arthouse 019 in Ghent, made on 27-28.07.2018.
It consists of a cyanotype of 4,5x7m made by making 143 folds on the roof of the location for 2 hours long using the sun to change the color of the fabric into a deep blue. The cyanotype was made by accident and the discontrol of creating a composition. The lightment proces was fixed by washing it in the river next to the building. After this the wet fabric was pulled up the flag pole to dry.
I would like to thank Bieke Criel, Michiel De Cleene, Koba De Meutter, Nele Dieleman and Valentijn Goethals for supporting this process. photos: Michiel De Cleene
BURN OUR WINGS
2018
'to take leave', duoshow with Bram De Jonghe, DMW Gallery, Antwerp
In 'burn our wings' I made use of the anthotype process to contactprint images using ink sensitive to light out distillated out of plants, weeds and flowers. It was a search through seasons, forests and layers of the earth to find the right plant for the right purpose.
The anthotypes got lightened for months by natural light until the photographs showed itself onto the paper. When the work was exhibited the images slowly destroy themselves by the light that made them visible.
In october 1833 Henry Fox Talbot wrote about the desire to invent a process which could fixate optical images. It was only in 1839 that this act succeeded. In the meanwhile all photographic images disappeared by the light that constructed them.
THESE WORKS WILL LEAVE
THEY WILL NOT COME BACK
GET USED TO THE AFTER IMAGE
KEEP THEM IN YOUR MIND
ONE DAY YOU WILL MISS THEM
flag, 2018, 28,5x40cm, Anthotype with platbased ink (poppyflower)
eye, 2019 (in dissolving stage)
19,5x28,3cm, Anthotype with platbased ink (poppyflower)
times, 2019 (in dissolving stage)
19,4x28cm, Anthotype with platbased ink (poppyflower)
fence, 2019 (in dissolving stage)
37,5x50cm, Anthotype with platbased ink (poppyflower)
private isle, 2018, 50x70x3cm, silkscreen with charcoal, elderberries and lilies of the valley
killer, 2018, 50x70x3cm, UV-print on mat plexi directly on wood
the chain, 2018, 30x50cm, UV-print on mat plexi directly on wood
flag (2018), eye (2018) the key (2018), pole (2020), cross (2018), variable sizes, anthotypes/silkscreen, lilies of the valley, nettle, rubus,...
A CIRCLE, A LINE, A CROSS
2019
‘a circle, a line, a cross', soloshow at CCHA, 2019
To make ‘a circle, a line, a cross’ I built a system to catch light trough cut out forms.
I maniputated the transportsystem into a new camera that is able to create a capture forms onto the whole length of the film. This is how images emerge. During the process I’m blind. Light is trying to move inside the system and hits the film during the movement of the mechanical transportsystem. This system is conducted manually, nothing is automatic
WHEN THE FIRE AND THE ROCK AND THE SEA ARE ONE
2019
'when the fire and the rock and the sea are one', 2019, tryptic in custom wooden frame with inlaid brass hinges, archival baryt inkjetprint, 60x120x3cm - Hopstreet Gallery Brussels
This work was made by shooting flashes of light at a rock on the isle of 'Isola Comacina', Italy. Each exposure compiles a new rock out of the same material. The camera doesn't move, only light finds its way.
RESPONDING RAIN
2018/2019
(50.8318722/ 4.3483912), 2019, 33x42cm, archival inkjetprint
(51.0242632 / 3.61875652), 2019, 33x42cm, archival inkjetprint
(50.8313175/ 4.3477196), 2019, 33x42cm, archival inkjetprint
(51.0242632 / 3.61875652), 2019, 33x42cm, archival inkjetprint
Light and toxic pollution are disrupting the biorhythm of humans, animals and insects.
With ‘Responding Rain’ I put silver halide material outside on rainy nights. The drops leave a print directly on the material. The toxics and chemicals in the rain determine a 1:1 impression and color the drops. The light pollution at the specific site influences the color of the background of the image.
(...) It's less like an object and more like the weather. In an object you can tell where the boundaries are, but in the weather it's impossible to say when something begins or ends.
John Cage
BLACK BODY ()
2016/2018
'temp.', Tique ¬ artspace, Antwerp, 2016 & 'The Golden Ass', In de ruimte, Gent, 2019
By its nature photography is an abstracting art, involving a gap between what is seen and what is shown, regardless of the level of documentary fidelity. In ‘black body’ the idea of photography get expanded as a transmutation of energy directly onto the celluloid. The images appear to be purely the record of a photochemical process, evidence of an action of emulsion and light itself.
By creating lens-less images the emphasis of photography shifts away from its signifying function. It examines the material as an imaginative basis for a photographic experience. The use of the apparatus is shifted by the use of power tools (a saw, an angle grinder and a drill) which made cuts inside film-rolls. By enlightening the emulsion with different colour temperatures and light-sources an image generates itself onto the light-sensitive celluloid. These abstract photographs may record or register but do not bear witness except to the presentness of light.
black body (simulation, scan, dfr, CG), 500x750cm, 2018
black body (friction, scan, fuiji), 165x120cm, 2018
black body (friction, scan, kodak 200-7), 165x120cm, 2016
ETUDES AUSTRALES
2018
For these coloured photograms I started from sheet-music of John Cage.
He copied the stars of the galaxy on transparencies, then he covered his ensemble staves with it. By this act music was set.
I did it the other way around and started out from his accidental sheet-music and copied it again on transparencies which I used to make photograms.
Besides that I made several box camera's with more than 70 lenses. The structure is set from the music, I opened holes to create new rhythms and colours.
This work was commissioned by Concertgebouw Bruges (B)
HITS OF SUNSHINE
2017
Soloshow 'Hits of Sunshine', galerie Botanique, Brussels
instead of you seeing the light
here light sees you
and frees
the focus of the lonely, solid sun
from complacent eyes shrouded in clouds
of their own device
fractions of captured light
sculptors of broken time
with calculated strokes of luck
one layer of sunshine
eats away the flesh of another
the trial and error of falling together
in both the moment modelling the surface
and the continuous interaction of duration
burn the cracks that fulfil the drill of memory
from behind mirrored walls
hands scrutinize in wonder
like a blind man bathing
in the burning tide
his eyes of glass, egg-white and storm
crystallize with every wave of foam
poem written by
Philippe François
cosmic reaction (pink study), 2017
68x95, digital inkjet print mounted on dibond, metal frame
atmospheric render (blue), 2017
68x95, digital inkjet print mounted on dibond, metal frame
portrait (sun pressure), 2017,
40x50, inkjet print on japanese paper, wooden frame
cosmic reaction (blue study), 2017
68x95, digital inkjet print mounted on dibond, metal frame
atmospheric render (pink), 2017
68x95, digital inkjet print mounted on dibond, metal frame
hands (sun pressure), 2017,
50x60, inkjet print on japanese paper, wooden frame
sunwriting 14:47, 2017
76x110, digital inkjet print mounted on dibond, metal frame
With the project ‘Hits of Sunshine’ (2017) the camera is pointed at the sun. Different from earlier works this piece is once again made with optics. ‘Hits of Sunshine’ is using the absence of observation, instead the camera gets the time to chemically and physically run through a (controlled) process.
The apparatus is the only observer, it is the only “witness”. The work is balanced between factuality and illusion. A connection arises between science (physics, chemicals), the camera (optics, time) and absence of observation (gaze). All these elements generate photographs which are not based on a reality but are born in their own matter.
UNDECIDED PHOTOGRAPHS
2012/2015
'Fabulous Failures', Museum Botanique, Brussels, 2017, curated by Erik Kessels
& 'The Gods Must Be Crazy - Part Photography', Stilll gallery, Directeurswoning Roeselare
‘Undecided Photographs’ are images without any consciousness on the creation of the photograph. Are these even photographs? By accidents and clumsiness these imagery came on my colornegative through the back of the camera without any control or decision. Yet they are build up by the three key elements of photography: light, space and time.
I only made the decision to use it as relevant. The scanner included dust, color, frame,... . The works are produced in hard plexi. Made out of one piece. All the sides of the plexi are hand-cranked.
These pictures have no anecdotes, neither they have stories or memories. But most important ‘Undecided Photographs’ is missing the core of the medium photography, the selective gaze/view of an author.
SEEING A RAINBOW (book)
2015
Title: 'Seeing a rainbow
(through a window that isn’t there)'
Author: Dries Segers
68 pages + 8 pages
350 copies
design: Ties Goos
words: Jeroen Laureyns, Philippe François,
Dries Segers, Dennis Van Mol & Eva Vermeiren
selfpublished
co-publisher: de Warande
ISBN 9789090289571
(sold out)
TEXT
STATEMENT
In a world ruled by digital data, Dries Segers (°1990) prefers to focus on organic materials, processes and techniques. Sun, water, wind, rain, fungus, plant, insect, tree,... are central elements in his speculative and experimental approach. He engages with and learns from them for developing f.ex. experimental camera and print techniques, plantbased inks and sunprints.
Raw materials are jaded, (non-) human life forms and matter are vanishing and become ghosts. Segers wants to make these disappearing zones visible. He uses photography to explore the relationships between human and non-human organisms or invisible systems of existence. He sees them as ‘vibrant matters’, non-human material with their own reality, strategy and sensitivity.
Both through the production of photographic (print-) processes or by investigating how to visualize invisible systems and materials, Segers builds his practice. Photographic media get the opportunity to be co-creator in this process. This way he moves beyond the traditional confines of the medium photography by focusing on invisibility and uncontrollability.
sources/articles/press
https://perhapsperhapsperhaps.typepad.com/what_the_butler_saw/2019/04/...
http://www.braakland-fomu.be/PORTFOLIODAYS/artists/driessegers.php
https://www.bruzz.be/en/culture/expo/photographer-dries-segers-found...
https://www.instagram.com/dries_segers/
INFO/CV
°1990, Turnhout
living and working in Brussels, Belgium
BE: 0671.680.062
tel/(+32)(0)477647935
info@driessegers.com represented by DMW Gallery
TRAINING
2013 Master Visual Arts, Sint-Lukas Hogeshool Brussels (B)
2011 Bachelor Visual Arts, Photography department; Sint-Lukas Hogeshool Brussels (B)
2010 Bachelor Fine Arts, Listahaskoli Islands; Reykjavik/Iceland (IS)
RESIDENCIES/GRANTS
2019 House Van Wassenhove, supported by Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens
2019 Fellowship of the Flemish Government
2017 Isola Comacina (Italy), supported by the Flemish Government
2016 Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee (sept - oct)
2016 Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee (april) on invitation
2014 Artist in Residence, De Warande, Turnhout
EXHIBITIONS (selection)
2020 DMW gallery, Antwerp (B), soloshow 'No Road to Hotel Bellevue'
Exi(s)t, virusproof poster exhibition, Brussels (B)
VITRINE gallery, Basel (CH), duoshow 'Our compagnion, our other' with Suzanna Zak
2019 In de Ruimte, Gent (B), 'The Golden Ass'
CAMERA/Centrul de Interes, Cluij-Napoca (RO), solo | ‘never, nowhere’
A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam (NL), ‘Mycelium as Lingua Franca’
Les Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles (FR), Belgian Night
Centre National de l’Audiovisuel Dudelange (LUX), Portfolio Days
Fotomuseum, Antwerp (B), Photobook Belge
POPPOSITIONS, critical artfair, Brussels (B), ‘Capital of Woke’
Hopstreet gallery - window, Brussels (B), solo | ‘when the fire and the rock’
CCHA Hasselt (B), solo | ‘a circle, a line, a cross’,
CCHA Hasselt (B)’Festival van de Controle’ w/ Francis Alyïs, Chaim Van Luijt, Ariane Loze, ...
2018 The Weekend Room, Gwangju, Seoul (KOR), ‘Open Content’
DMW artspace, Antwerp (B), ‘1+1+1=3’ w/ Denitsa Todorova and Caroline Van den Eynde
019, Ghent (B),SUNDAYS, w/ Martin Belou, Kåre Leander Frang, Santiago Taccetti,...
De Warande, Turnhout (B), ‘Het Gouden Paviljoen’
w/ Daisuke Yokota, Marco Tirelli, Geert Goiris, Ori Gherst, Edith Dekyndt,...
Galerie Hangar Brussels (B), solo | ‘helios’
DMW artspace, Antwerp (B), ‘to take leave’, duoshow w/ Bram De Jonghe
2017 Bogardenkapel ‘Brugge Foto’, at w/ Michel Mazzoni, Sybren Vanoverberghe, Jeroen De Wandel,...
Musée Botanique, Brussels (B), ‘Fabulous Failures’, curated by Erik Kessels,
w/ Ruth van Beek, Matt Stuart, Sarah Carlier, Helmut Smits,...
Fusée de la Motographie by Recyclart (Le Bal, FR), (C/O, Berlin), (PL), ...
Galerie Botanique, Brussels (B), solo l ‘hits of sunshine’
CC Merksem (B), solo l ‘what is behind that curtain’
2016 Fotomuseum Antwerp (B), BRAAKLAND
Tique | art space, .temp, duo show w/ Matthias Ysebaert
Turkish Photography Festival, Fotoğraf Vakfı Foundation, Istanbul (TR)
Antwerp Art Weekend, represented by de Warande & Frans Masereel Centrum
w/ Anton Cotteleer, Koba de Meutter, Hannelore Van Dijck, Arpaïs Du Bois,...
A Reading Room, La Houle at Poppositions Brussels
CAMPO + NEIN, ‘ON ICE’ Gent w/ Gerard Herman, Kasper De Vos, Willem Boel,...
2015 Tique | art space, Antwerp, solo | ‘Seeing a rainbow(...)’
Gouvernement, Gent, solo | ‘Seeing a rainbow(...)’
stilll gallery, ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy - Part Photography’
w/ Jan Kempenaers, Emmeline de Mooij, Ria Pacquée, Katrin Kamrau,...
Tique | art space, ‘Is it a painting’ w/ Manor Grunwald, Ruth Van Beek,...
Unseen Festival Program, Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL)
Ithaka, KU Leuven w/ Vesna Faassen & Lukas Verdijk, Ritsart Gobyn,...
2014 Neue Galerie, Augsburg (D), ‘A Process’, Der Greif
Denkmal 37, Brussels, ‘Dear Image, why are you so jaded?’
w/ Jan De Cock, Ash Bowland & Dennis Van Mol
KMSKA, Koningin Fabioalazaal Antwerp, ‘Duo’s - de Modernen’
w/ Jef Verheyen, Jan Cox, Vaast Colson, Jef Geys, Fontana,...
PUBLICATIONS (selection)
2019 'Belgian Night', newspaper edited by Marie Papazouglo & Vincen Beeckman
for Les Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles
'fungi', Dries Segers, self-published
28,2 x 42cm, 200 copies, ISBN: 9789463883092
'new skin/levitations', Hannah De Meyer with a photo-essay by Dries Segers
2018 'S&D#024 / APE#117: Sabotage and Complicity'; Published by APE (Art Paper Editions) & Smoke & Dust
'IMA Magazine' vol. 24, selected as 'The Young Photographers of the Next Generation' (JP)
'ART1ST', as part of 1granary magazine (UK)
'Contact', Maarten Inghels, de Bezige Bij, ISBN: 9789023454779
2017 ‘End to End / Performing Objects', Kristof Van Gestel
2016 ‘Six Questions’, Tique l art paper ISSN: 2468-0907
2015 'uncovered' Daklozenkrant / social project, Newspaper to homeless as founder/editor
w/ Pierre & Maarten Mertens
‘Seeing a rainbow (through a window that isn’t there)’, Dries Segers, De Warande
20 × 27,5 cm, paperback, 350 copies, ISBN: 9789090289571
'.TIFF MAGAZINE', FOMU Antwerp, ISBN: 9789066251854
'Phases magazine' 28/15
2014 ‘Cunning Surroundings’, Kasper Bosmans & Dries Segers, Heilig Graf Turnhout / Anastasis
2008 ‘De Canvascollectie’, Lannoo, ISBN: 9789020978629
LECTURES (selection)
2019 Lecture 'On Invisibility', University Cluj-Napoca (RO)
2018 Open Academy, 'Resistance', Centrale For Contemporary Art Brussels
Lecture 'De Donkere Kamer' w/ Stephan Vanfleteren, Teju Cole and Filip Dujardin
Lecture Department Photography LUCA Brussels
2017 Lecture Shoot Amsterdam, Pakhuis de Zwijger Amsterdam (NL)
2015 EXTRA FORT presenation with Christian Vum, Recyclart Brussels
2015 Tiff-talks, Fotomuseum Antwerp
INVISIBILITY
TOUCH
RESILIENCE
CARE
APPEARANCE