Yves Ullens

GG – How would you define your work in few words?

My abstract artwork is about catching the vital energy supplied by light and bringing it magnified to the viewers.

Following my near death experience in my childhood, light became later naturally the central theme and the driving force as well of all my creations.

By making my camera travel in time and space, I create fairy-like imaginary worlds mostly from ordinary objects. I use my camera as a purely experimental tool. The metamorphosis of the subject is achieved directly during the capture without the need for computerized retouching or effects.

The emotion is central in my photographs. I take a deliberately aesthetic and sensorial approach to bring additional wellbeing to the audience.

My project is to mix photography with other forms of Art.

 

GG – And what is your aim as an artist? What do you want to achieve as an artist?

For me artists have two main functions: either they make others (their viewers) think or they try to make them dream. The second function is clearly central in my work. I am trying to bring them into a dreamlike world. Most of the artists are nowadays frightened by beauty and some collectors claim today that a work of art as to be ugly to be interesting… I am not frightened by beauty. When you look at a great work of Rohtko, Richter or Kapoor, don’t you think they are gorgeous !!!

 

GG – Which artist of the past would you most like to meet?

Clearly Laslo Moholy Nagy. He was a genius. He was both an inventor and a great photographer. And he was also a great leader as a was one of the founder of the Bauhaus. That period was also the most interesting for abstract photography !!!

Even if I am someone focused on the future…if only I could travel to the past for meeting him !

 

GG – What do you wish every child were taught?

In 1979, I followed a photography course in the US with…a great architect !!! When I entered the classroom with my very first reflex camera on the shoulder, he gave me a nasty glance and explained me we were not going to take any pictures for the next 2 hours. As an impatient teenager, I nearly left the classroom immediately…
Fortunately, I stayed !!! Because the next two hours, he learned us to look at things from different angles, with different lights and perspectives. He also taught us to think about what we wanted to show to our public and the effects we wanted to achieve and why.

Those two hours were the most precious of my artist’s life.

If only we could teach to children to look and think about what they see and their own perception, it would be so great !!!

 

Artwork

 

Curriculum Vitae

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