Geert Goiris travels the world, seeking out unusual places and interpreting them in enigmatic images. Despite the high resolution afforded by his large-format film camera, his images don’t overwhelm us with definitive information. They are intentionally unpinned from a specific era, giving the feeling that we could be simultaneously looking at the past and the future.
“The photographic act is by definition contrary to anticipation: only what already exists can be captured on film or in the memory card. As soon as the subject is immortalized, it belongs to the past, even if its representation is constantly updated in the present, every time we look at it. Going against this ontological definition of the medium, Geert Goiris has been developing since the early 2000s a photographic practice that could be described as anticipatory. His images capture in the present the harbingers of the disorders to come, whether they are of a climatic or ecological nature. Of course, the support of this mental projection is located in reality – whether it is a desert landscape, a concrete architecture turned upside down or a miniaturized silhouette – but this reality is constantly questioned by the observer because of the disturbance effected by the image. The artist thus seeks to contradict the veracity of the testimony offered by the photograph, while soliciting the viewer’s receptivity to his own work.”
*Extract of “Une photographie anticipatoire”, article written by Septembre Tiberghien in the context of the exhibition Fight or Flight that took place in 2016 at Frac Haute-Normandie.
His work is present, among others, in the following collections: Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Museum of photography, Antwerp; Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, Spain; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris; Direction des Affaires culturelles de la Ville de Paris; Deutsche BÖRSE AG, Germany; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco.
