[Fall 2023]

By Emmanuel Galland

[Excerpt]

Galerie Laroche / Joncas, Montréal
11.01.2023 — 11.02.2023

The Belgian artist Bert Danckaert’s regular visits to Cuba seem to have created a new opening in his work, as can be seen in his recent series Teatros (2018–22). In his previous projects, he collected fragments of urban life in tight shots. He has gone almost around the world taking these pictures, and his work has been shown just as widely.

After a first solo exhibition in 2018 at Galerie Laroche/Joncas in Montreal, he returned to the gallery with Teatros, a corpus of some twenty prints that offer broader views and vaster expanses. Still focusing on city walls, this time exclusively in Havana, Danckaert has opened his lens and zoomed out.

Danckaert is no tourist. He doesn’t stay in a nice hotel, go to the beach, or jog on the Malecón. He’s a flâneur: he scrutinizes, brushes up against, and captures walls – with a particular penchant for buildings that have seen better days, of which there are many in Havana. Spanish colonial architecture has nothing to do with his photographic quest…

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES ]
[ Complete article, in digital version, available here: Bert Danckaert, Teatros — Emmanuel Galland ]