Simple Present is a photographic research into the psychological, social, political and aesthetic meaning of the concept of 'inattentive space'.
"The artistic practice of Bert Danckaert is based on an essentially anti-photographic reduction: he looks away from the interesting, the anecdotal, the typical, the dramatic and the spectacular (...). In the most neutral and distant way, and according to a limited set of visual parameters (frontal position, no horizon, shallow space ...) Bert Danckaert always returns to the same motive to show it in different ways and constructs an infinite repetitive series of stylized compositions. In this sense his work connects with minimalist and conceptual traditions. He has nothing to say, but gives a stage to the non-shown.
Here and there, color and light or certain decorative shapes and architectural elements refer to strange, exotic cultures. The realization that the photos were not only made in Antwerp but also in Havana, Mumbai, Beijing or Cape Town makes this photographic project even more ambitious and at the same time more absurd. The tourist cliché of the travel photo is reversed: where there is nothing to see becomes an attraction. Bert Danckaert stretches photography beyond the limit of documentary medium, looking for the zero point of the representation. Beyond that limit, he shows an unfamiliar landscape." - Inge Henneman
Promoters: Jan Blommaert (Universiteit Tilburg) & Lucas Vandervost (KCA)
