Dries Segers

Soloshow, ‘No road to Hotel Bellevue’, 2020, DMW Gallery, Antwerp (B). No Road to Hotel Bellevue is a total installation of a natural world in which all artworks are interwoven as organisms until they can no longer be disentangled. This coming together originates in the in-between space, the speculative space.

FUNGI, 2019, Installation at POPPOSITIONS critical art-fair Brussels (B). This installation involves prints that will appear and disappear according to the room temperature. Two heating systems are installed to provide change. By timing the heaters will go on and off. The viewer is not able to control what he sees.

dries-segers-3-copyright-VITRINE-Nici-Jost

Duoshow with Suzanna Zak, ‘Our companion, our other’, 2020, VITRINE, Vogesenplatz, Basel (CH). Border trees are planted at strategic locations in the landscape. They make visible certain transitions of national, community and property borders. Multiple administrations monitor the conservation of these trees. Governments are obliged to replant and protect them.

In a world ruled by digital data Dries Segers (°1990) prefers to focus on organic materials processes and techniques. Sun, water, wind, rain, fungus, plant, insect, tree... are central elements in his speculative and experimental approach. He engages with and learns from them for developing e.g. experimental camera and print techniques plant-based inks and sun prints.

Raw materials are jaded (non-) human life forms and matter are vanishing and become ghosts. Segers wants to make these disappearing zones visible. He uses photography to explore the relationships between human and non-human organisms or invisible systems of existence. He sees them as ‘vibrant matters’ non-human material with their own reality strategy and sensitivity. Both through the production of photographic (print-) processes or by investigating how to visualize invisible systems and materials Segers builds his practice. Photographic media get the opportunity to be co-creator in this process. This way, he moves beyond the traditional confines of the medium photography by focusing on invisibility and uncontrollability.

Dries Segers has been shown in solo and group shows, including Vitrine Gallery (Basel, Switzerland), A Tale of A Tub (Rotterdam, Netherlands), The Weekend Room (Seoul, South Korea), De Brakke Grond (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Musee and Galerie Botanique (Brussels), Neue Galerie (Ausberg, Germany), Warte für Kunst (Kassel, Germany), 019 (Ghent), Art On Paper (Bozar, Brussels), Tique art space (Antwerp), De Warande (Turnhout) and Fotomuseum (Antwerp).