Statement (part 1)

I started my first paintings of aerial views in 2003 when I was travelling very often by airplane between the south of Europe Italy and Holland. During my flights I was fascinated by the striking differences between the landscape views from my country and Italy. When you are travelling above Italy you see a very different landscape then in the Netherlands: this is of course because Holland is a flat land, and Italy has a great variety of altitudes there are alps, mountains, hills, etc. When you see Italy from above, you do not have the perception of clear structures. You rather see plots of streets and countryside -urban and natural landscapes strangely intermingled.
In short, you see that the Italian landscape is much less designed than the Dutch one: and you start wandering if those differences of views can actually express the different cultural and historical origins of the two countries.


Still what interests me is not a mere representation 1:1 of those impressions related to a political and social history of landscape, or urban planning.
I would say that i use this bird views as a motif, or even better as a trigger. an appearance of the surface of the painting which allows me to catch the attention of the observer and trigger his reaction. A reaction which is at the same time physical and intellectual - which involves his body, his senses as well as his mind. By using an image which is 'likely' to be representing a real landscape, I trigger the attention of the viewer: but when he gets closer, he can realize that what he sees might be very different than what he first had thought. What happens is a literally physical and mental zooming-in and out of the painting and of people belief.


What is at the core of my art is basically the idea that there is an intrinsic ambiguity of whatever representation of reality.
In the process of looking at my paintings which involves the viewer's mind and his senses-body the emphasis is put on the traveling, on the wanderings of the eyes of the viewer along my painting, and on his capacity of reacting with his/her own imagination and beliefs to what he sees.
In short, there is a questioning if that part of the image belongs, or correspond to a REAL concrete object or situation existing in reality.