Hi everyone, I would like to talk to you about Bas Princen.
He is an architecture photographer fascinated by the material.
His work is full of monoliths that are given to be seen as huge sculptures.
Through these images, he pursues a search for simple volumes to suprematism.
The shape of the monolith evokes many things in the imagination.
It is a recurring form in history from the Egyptian pyramids to the 2001 monolith of the Space Odyssey,
through the Kaaba in Islam, the cubic construction towards which all the Muslims of the world turn to pray.
The idea of a monumental mass standing upright, struggling against its own weight, is quite fascinating.
Monumentality is more appealing to our emotions than truly to our understanding.
We can only feel small in the face of an object with huge dimensions.
I remembered this sentence of Rudy Ricciotti, an architect whom I adore, he said:
"Unlike other buildings, we are all equal in the face of monumental architecture."
"Whether you're a two-meters-ten footballer or a five-year-old, you all feel the same way."
Thus, in the human tradition, monoliths are often given spiritual power.
For Bas Princen, his photos constitute a search for this fundamental and absolute feeling.
But it also questions the status of the base on which these masses are placed.
When he frames, he tries to purify the context as much as possible.
It gives us to see these huge masses isolated from other objects nearby.
In this way, the photographer wants to show us how these constructions are erected despite the landscape on which they rest.
Some of these images even evoke dystopias, with the promise of a life in complete autarky.
It's the fantasy of having everything you need inside the building, and all the rest is outside.
Traditionally in sculpture, the base contrasts with the work it supports by its appearance.
A finely carved sculpture is contrasted with a rough base.
We find this hierarchy in Bas Princen, but he can play on other distinctions.
for example, it puts in opposition vegetated soils or left undeveloped with human constructions.
He then opposes the natural to the artificial.
Bas Princen also pursues the theme of matter in his work through photographs of destruction.
It is a search for the complexity of the mass through the exploration of the tectonic layers.
There is a kind of aesthetic of destruction, it is a return to the earth.
It is then only mass for the mass, matter is abolished of any function.
Thank you for watching the episode, see you soon!
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