Kempenaers’ photographs of landscapes altered by man forestall the nostalgia that has, over time, become typical for the picturesque. They force the viewer to remain in the present and think about its conditions and its future, and about the forces threatening our environment. - Dirk De Meyer, On Jan Kempenaers’ Contemporary Picturesque

Breese Little is delighted to announce Jan Kempenaers’ first solo exhibition in London. The show will present a selection of Kempenaers’ architectural and island studies in tandem with the renowned Spomenik series charting World War Two memorials built in the 1960s and ‘70s across The Balkans in the former Yugoslavia.

Over the last decade, the Antwerp-based photographer has developed a heightened and conscientious aesthetic. Gradual metamorphosis is charted with shared inevitability in both the natural world and in response to mankind’s intervention. Spatial arrangement is privileged across abandoned utopian visions and cumulative urban sprawl. These images draw focus to the temporality of modernist ambitions, which nevertheless maintain their monumentality, an attraction of their natural counterparts.

Kempenaers’ architectural arrangements are counter-balanced with expansive seascapes in the exhibition, captured with an interchangeable formal awareness, characteristic of his practise. Uniformly overcast skies suggest parallels across these scenes and suburbia, proposing the alternative conditions of visual interest in a post-industrial age. Nevertheless, Kempenaers’ disinterested eye engenders a strict geometric awareness, distancing emotion from his subjects, which remain devoid of people.

Jan Kempenaers (b. 1968, Heist op den Berg) lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium and is currently affiliated to KASK / School of Arts Ghent. The artist studied film and photography at the School of Arts Ghent from 1986 – 91, and completed his PhD at the same institution in 2012. Recent solo exhibitions include Spomenik, Fowler Museum, L.A. (2013), Spomenik, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t lj, Amsterdam (2010), Recent Ruïns, Be Part, Waregem (2010), Spomenik, Middleimmuseum, Antwerp (2010) and Crown Gallery, Brussels (2006). Kempenaers’ was a participating artist in Back to the Future, Breese Little, London (2012), The Luxury of Dirt, Galerie Bob van Orsouw (2011), The Architecture Biennale, Venice, (2010) and Monolithes, FRAC Centre, Orleans (2010). Recent publications include Bun Briste, Downpatrick Head (2012), Picturesque (2012) and Spomenik (2010). Reference copies are available at Breese Little. Many of the exhibited photographs are part of his artistic research project on contemporary picturesque that was generously funded by the Research Fund, University College Ghent, between 2006 and 2012.

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