
The Nutshuis is far from the most perfect place in town to have an exhibition. The building has an entrance hall, a canteen and some corridors and staircases. But that is compensated by its enthusiasm for showing photography which has an impact both artistically and socially.

The present exhibition Close, about intimacy, works well within the context of the building in spite of its shortcomings.


In the entrance hall there is work on show by Isabelle Wenzel who takes herself as an object in still-lives, thus

making statements on femininity, beauty and intimacy.


Katrien de Blauwer uses found footage and makes two part collages of them. Many a figure

has lost its head in the process.


Bruno Roels has printed his diary pictures with a common copier which makes the pictures less clear. Used as wallpaper

they create a blurred world of memory and become memory walls.

The exhibition shows considerable differences. The difference of dealing with memory between Roels and Florian Braakman couldn’t be bigger.

Braakman is closest to the idea of romantic love which is there to be lost and to be remembered melancholically.


Marina Richter presents her pictures of intimacy in a more or less intuitive way. The way

she has composed the pictures is a way of thinking.


Lina Scheynius’ pictures are both daringly intimate and otherworldly. It seems she doesn’t make a difference


between a person or a view of clouds and both are anonymous, but both are intimate and sensual.

While i was there by the end of last week, Zhe Chen’s work was still not on show because German customs are making problems. Great pity and a great shame, as far as i can see.

Geraldine Kang makes pictures within the intimacy of her own family,

with astonishingly monumental and theatrical results.


I must admit i don’t understand what Sarah Eechaut’s work on show is all about (I understand they are self-portraits;


the information on the sign isn’t particularly enlightening, but maybe i’m too lazy), but it is intriguing and impressive work anyway.

Most elaborately on show of all is Iztok Klančar’s work, which is presented on screen in the Nutshuis’ small cinema. His work, again,


combines personal intimacy and romance, but


from a gay point of view, introduced

with a real bunch of lilies, flowers of chastity, but with a heavy smell of decomposition.


These flowers of chastity and decomposition might as well accompany the moving series of Colin Gray about the deterioration of man in his old age and death


and the rituals of consolation that give it a meaning. He took pictures of his parents. His pictures have become part of the process and ritual.

In the nearby shop window gallery Acte de Présence some more works by Klančar are on show, their intimate explicitness mingling with the local street noise.

All together it is a good exhibition of pain, doubt and love, things the street won’t tell you.

(Click on the picture to enlarge)
Bertus Pieters
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