Yugen

Yugen is one of those Japanese words that have no equivalent in English and therefore cannot be translated accurately.

These are feelings or concepts that we never express and which have no place in our culture. It is to realize that the universe triggers emotional reactions too mysterious and profound to express in words - for example, by realizing how long it took the universe to create the world we live in or thinking about the number of cells that make up our body, etc.

In this series, I try to build bridges between these 2 cultures, but also between painting and photography. Through the chemical alteration of my prints and my negatives, I delve into the exhaustion of matter, I accelerate the degradation of my archives, questioning the sedimentation of my personal memories. The result is images trapped in an irreversible process of wear and tear, creating unexpected and fragmented narratives whose links feed an emotional distortion of memory.

The book was released by the artist at Musée de la Photographie (Centre d'art contemporain de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles), Charleroi Belgium, May 24th.