By Pieter Chanterie:
‘The narrative image’ is my main concern. I mostly make paintings and books, investigating the tension between an image with painterly qualities and the notion of a story. This narrative only exists in the image and can’t be told in another language, comparable to the spectacle of episodes in the circus. You jump from atmosphere to atmosphere which makes sense in the tent, but when you get back in the real world you can’t exactly tell what you just witnessed. I used to be in the circus, which is an important inspiration for my fictional and autobiographical web of stories and images. Other themes that fascinate me are the leprechaun, the everyday, the constructed image, dancing and one of the most important ones: observing. My work is shaped by different ways of observing: observing like a child, who doesn’t know exactly what he’s looking at and fantasizes, voyeuristic observing, looking at something that doesn’t know it’s being watched and actively observing, by looking at something, you become part of what you’re observing.

Artists: Pieter Chanterie