photo: Ruud van Empel
Ruud van Empel creates photographic works of people and nature that look highly realistic, but are not. You may not see that at first glance, yet you sense it immediately. Characterized by a gentle nostalgia, his oeuvre reflects an idealized world, reinforced by memories and surpassed by the computer.
After fourteen years, a substantial new book of photographic work by Ruud van Empel has finally appeared. It presents a broad selection from his photographic series since 1995, when he first publicly exhibited his artworks. Series such as The Office, Study in Green and World have since become known worldwide and reflect his fondness for collecting references to films and television series from that period.
His later work consists mainly of landscapes assembled from photographs he took during his many journeys to places including Japan, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Cuba, and numerous European countries.
Xavier Canonne of the Photography Museum in Charleroi wrote the introduction to this retrospective. Christophe Ruys, former director of FOMU and the Fashion Museum Antwerp, and researcher and author Lex van de Haterd contributed essays that analyze Van Empel's work and explore his unique technique.
Ruud van Empel studied at the Sint Joost Academy of Art in Breda. After working briefly as a television designer, he decided to pursue a career as an artist. Since then, he has had numerous solo exhibitions at renowned museums around the world.
His work is held in major collections, including those of George Eastman House, the Sir Elton John Photography Collection, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, and the Rijksmuseum.
Van Empel's oeuvre is characterized by a gentle nostalgia for childhood and reflects a more or less idealized world, reinforced by memories and surpassed by the computer.
The attention to detail in his treatment of materials, shadows, and foliage makes the images lifelike, rendering the figures of children in Nordic or tropical forests all the more unsettling, whether set against a horizon of cacti or a maritime backdrop.
Xavier Canonne is an art historian from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and holds a doctorate in art history from the Sorbonne in Paris. From 1987 to 2000, he served as director of the collection of the Province of Hainaut, covering modern and contemporary art. Since March 2000, he has been director of the Musée de la Photographie de la Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles in Charleroi, Belgium. He has curated numerous exhibitions and edited and written several books and studies, particularly on Surrealism, Man Ray, and Eugène Atget.
Christoph Ruys: "Van Empel aims to create a photographic image that looks like reality or, more precisely, like his reality. His objective is not idealization or making everything beautiful; it is to shape the image in such a way that it becomes his world, viewed from his personal perspective."
Ruud van Empel | A Perfect World - Retrospective - Christophe Ruys (Essay), Lex van de Haterd (Essay), Xavier Canonne (Introduction)
Pages: 208
Price: € 34,95
Publisher: WBOOKS
