Maxim Van Cauwenberge

At the beginning of this black and white career lies Rinus Van de Velde his work as the main source of inspiration. As a student he recreated the monumental drawings but instead of recreating the cinematographic aspect, he reduced the subject to that of small daily gatherings at a local pub or a neighbours garden. In this aspect it’s rather the series ‘Fishermen’ of Stephan Vanfleteren that inspired the matter behind the image. Very quickly the dramatic clair obscure exposure shone only a light on that of the casual.

But the inspiration remained cinematographic, quite typically coming from old black and white movies where villains are still depicted in dark shades while heroes glimmer in white cottons. It’s the discussing scenes in ‘Twelve Angry Men’, or the point where the villain is captured in a shot between the heroes' legs in ‘Rashomon’. But the black and white is not limited to purely colorless movies, yet even in more current movies the sources of visual inspiration draw from often dystopian movies who dim the lights to such a degree that one might confuse them for black and white, whether were talking about the desert scenes of ‘Kin Dza Dza’, the rain flooded streets of ‘Shadow’, or the shimmering rooftops we see in ‘Bladerunner’.

And yet these scenes Maxim depicts remain in the tranquil, slowed down moments of the daily. Perhaps this is the moment we grab a pin to David Claerbout and his preparatory sketches for his movie scenes. Or we rather should think about the bister sketches of Borremans creating the uncanny in frozen time. Maybe it’s as with Thiery Cordiers seamountains where the stillness of the perfect moment transforms the drawing of a sea gulf into the edges of a mountain.

By slightly moving the light from one dark corner to the edge of a studying face, Maxim does not try to reveal or main figures it’s handling, but rather like Brassai’s lonely lamp post in the nights of Paris he portrays a lonely light holding the focus on the warmth that the light is capturing.

In the end, how present any figure may be, it’s the stillness in the motion, the turning point before the handling, the shuttering of the eyelids right before the eyes meet. It’s that absolute stillness that prevails in each setting that is being portrayed.

Alas simply, the daily in its existence.