Creation / Destruction
As a metaphor for human behavior.
The work of Valentin van der MEULEN started with a reflexion about images, their reading and their link with reality. These axes expressed themselves in plastic point of view by cropping, cutting out, contrast and now by erasing.
In a first step, to work from images of print media or internet, including sometimes images of his private sphere, big drawings represent mainly individuals on a black background. These drawings made with charcoal and black stone seem to lose any context in the image and its subject. The spectator who can't anymore connect them with a precise event or with news which the image in its origin was supposed to represent.
In a second step, these drawings are partially or totally erased. Destruction or continuity of process of the act of drawing, these erasing are both made in studio or during public interventions.
To erase image, it's to erase as much their subject as the object that's image. Give it a new temporality, make it imperceptible or revealed. Placing the spectator between " what was " and " what remains ", the erasing allows to wonder about notions of lack, short-lived, disappearance, memory but also of track and heritage. These notions became today the basis of his work.
© Nicolas Héron
