Bob van Orsouw

Bernard Voïta
27 August – 5 November 2011
Season’s opening: Friday, 26 August 2011, 6 to 8 pm

For around twenty years, Bernard Voïta has been an internationally known artist, prized for his way of working in a crossover between sculpture and photography. In his photo series, objects and utensils from daily life crop up, which the artist arranges in his studio into an ensemble so that they, from a certain perspective, evoke the impression of one image. In this way, abstract patterns and lines, architectural and urban landscapes, chairs and cameras come about, which, at a closer look, become recognizable as individual components such as radiators, bucket and pots. Voïta’s arrangements are only there to serve the purpose of being photographed so that, with the illusion, the elimination of the duplicity is likewise represented.

In his fourth exhibition at Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Voïta presents new works from his series “Paysage ahah”, begun in 2009. Photographs of landscapes (as the title suggests), but also pictures of architecture, constitute the starting point of these works, which are always made up of two layers, the photograph and the printed glass plane. The photo shows a constructed architectural motif, the print a realistic view of nature. Both images are, however, monochrome and, thus, far removed from any idea of a naturalistic reproduction of reality. We are able to identify the reference according to its contours and structures; the photo’s effect is like a shadow in color. The fact that, in this series, each work is composed of two levels makes the two-dimensional picture seem like a three-dimensional peep-box with the character of a backdrop setting. According to the fall of light, we recognize a further spatial illusion: the shadow of the pane of glass cast on the picture plane behind it.

In the gallery’s second exhibition room, the Swiss artist takes trompe l’oeil a step further with three monumental photographs from the series “Caméra”. Not till the found objects arranged in the studio are seen through the lens of the photo apparatus does the object—a camera—take on form. In an ironic way, by a shot of its own motif, the photo apparatus practically produces a self-portrait. Behind the glass the camera motifs—applied 2.8m high to the wall—look like archeological objects.

In presenting the two series in juxtaposition, Voïta’s intention becomes clear, to bring the borderline between reality and illusion, object and image, secret and revelation, to visible depiction.


Bernard Voïta (*1960 in Cully) lives and works in Brussels. Numbered among his international exhibitions are those at Kunsthalle Zurich (1997), at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2004), at Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne (2005), at Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Wien (2006), at Culturgest in Lisbon (2011) and in Skulpturenpark Cologne (2011-2013).