Flashlight equipment
2019
Solo exhibition in STUK Café, Leuven, B
curator Karen Verschooren
A collaboration with Cas-co, Leuven
About the work
The title of this exhibition, Flashlight Equipment refers to clouds and explosions. With the historical use of the building as a chemistry lab in mind, Boogaerts imagines and visualizes how falling in love changes our perception, putting everything in a different light.
In her new film Diffuse Light Boogaerts plays both with contrast as well as association; images of a ‘clean’, controlled laboratory setting are juxtaposed with images of a ‘spontaneous’, organic nature. Two seemingly completely different worlds are glued together in a reflection on the effects of being in love. Boogaerts furthermore combines photographic elements (of a.o. the former chemistry labs in STUK before it was transformed into an arts center) with hyperdetailed drawings on nine glass plates – the precursor to the diaslide. How can a scientific approach to being in love exist alongside a sensory one? We know that being in love sets in motion certain chemical processes in the body, but what do you do with this knowledge? And does it explain the change in perception of a person in love? In Reflected Light Boogaerts created life-size cut-out figures to further explore and reflect upon how being in love can obstruct one’s view, how the other as well as the world becomes hazy, and how in this skewed perspective the perfect union with the other exists. Like a flash…
Text by Karen Verschooren
