Irène de Groot
Photographer / Visual artist
I am a surveyor of streets, cities, suburbs, countrysides, as well as industrial zones. They are all of interest to me in search of details or landscapes that will feed my photographic work whatever the inspiration of the moment.
And then, there are these paintings, some would call them crusts, kits. Works of artistes sometimes gifted, even talented, perhaps Sunday painters, or serial painters who in a few strokes of virtuoso brushes present idealized landscapes with psychedelic colors.
For a little over a year, I went every Tuesday morning to the Flee market, looking for these paintings which for the most were in a pitiful state, torn apart, smashed, stained, damaged by ill-treatment. Rejected, abandoned by heirs or by default, bought by ragpickers.
I photographed them, pampered them, restored them digitally. Sometimes I changed the tones and above all, I introduced the fruits of my photographic gleanings and thus gave them a new life, a recycling, in a way a discreet message to this world on the verge of loss.
Irène de Groot, January 2020
And then, there are these paintings, some would call them crusts, kits. Works of artistes sometimes gifted, even talented, perhaps Sunday painters, or serial painters who in a few strokes of virtuoso brushes present idealized landscapes with psychedelic colors.
For a little over a year, I went every Tuesday morning to the Flee market, looking for these paintings which for the most were in a pitiful state, torn apart, smashed, stained, damaged by ill-treatment. Rejected, abandoned by heirs or by default, bought by ragpickers.
I photographed them, pampered them, restored them digitally. Sometimes I changed the tones and above all, I introduced the fruits of my photographic gleanings and thus gave them a new life, a recycling, in a way a discreet message to this world on the verge of loss.
Irène de Groot, January 2020
