Constellation of Nitrate

Constellation
of Nitrate

Lucas Leffler
20.01 → 25.02.2024

Opening
Saturday, 20.01.2024
14 → 19h
In presence of the artist

Exhibition
until 25.02.2024

This exhibition is part of
the Photo Brussels Festival program.



Constellation of nitrate is featured in
Arts Libres, Read the article by Jean-Marc Bodson.



In parallel of this exhibition, Lucas Leffler will be presenting an immersive installation at ISELP as part of a group show entitled "Critical Matter".

A thousand miles from the clichés of the discipline, Lucas Leffler seizes the creative gesture of the visual artist to question and redefine the nature of the photographic image.

Nurturing an interest in the pre-digital age, Lucas Leffler - a digital native born in 1993 - brings anachronistic processes into the present day: film and other alternative techniques based on centuries-old know-how. Like the pioneers of photography, he constantly faces technical obstacles. Of an obstinate nature and with an experimental approach as his driving energy, Lucas Leffler develops singular processes for fixing images on supports as varied as they are unexpected, betraying his fascination with the materiality of photography. An interest that he first developed as a lab technician. This professional experience enabled him to experience the technical-chemical mysteries that govern photography.

Beyond technical grammar, Lucas Leffler has a passion for industry. It's an interest that sprang up early on in the imagination of this native of Virton. And with good reason: the Burgo Ardennes paper mill in the Gaume landscape is an unsuspected industrial panorama that left an indelible imprint on his childhood. His two areas of fascination - technology and industry - quickly and naturally converge on a project that underpins and irrigates all his artistic reflections: to carry out an inventory of the state of the image industry, and more precisely of the digital shift which sacrificed the film tradition on the altar of technology. This subject leads him in the footsteps of the industry's global giants: Ilford, Agfa-Gevaert and Kodak.

As if to whisper to him that he's on the right track, the story of Agfa-Gevaert holds a most unexpected surprise. By a happy coincidence, Lucas Leffler unearths a "nugget": the story of two Gevaert employees who extracted between seven and thirteen kilos of silver per ton of mud from the muddy waters of a small river! Beyond the metaphor and mythological nature of the anecdote, the artist deduces that the concentration of silver residues in this mud could make it photosensitive. Between the imagined project and reality, some adjustments - and a few measurements of silver nitrate - are necessary. The photographer succeeds in fixing a permanent image on a plate of dried mud. With this series entitled Zilverbeek (silver stream), Lucas Leffler establishes himself as one of the most daring and innovative photographers of his generation. The enthusiasm is unanimous. Poet, magician and scientist, he takes the reproduction of an image into wild territories.

A thousand miles from the clichés of the discipline, Lucas Leffler seizes the creative gesture of the visual artist to question and redefine the nature of the photographic image.

Nurturing an interest in the pre-digital age, Lucas Leffler - a digital native born in 1993 - brings anachronistic processes into the present day: film and other alternative techniques based on centuries-old know-how. Like the pioneers of photography, he constantly faces technical obstacles. Of an obstinate nature and with an experimental approach as his driving energy, Lucas Leffler develops singular processes for fixing images on supports as varied as they are unexpected, betraying his fascination with the materiality of photography. An interest that he first developed as a lab technician. This professional experience enabled him to experience the technical-chemical mysteries that govern photography.

Beyond technical grammar, Lucas Leffler has a passion for industry. It's an interest that sprang up early on in the imagination of this native of Virton. And with good reason: the Burgo Ardennes paper mill in the Gaume landscape is an unsuspected industrial panorama that left an indelible imprint on his childhood. His two areas of fascination - technology and industry - quickly and naturally converge on a project that underpins and irrigates all his artistic reflections: to carry out an inventory of the state of the image industry, and more precisely of the digital shift which sacrificed the film tradition on the altar of technology. This subject leads him in the footsteps of the industry's global giants: Ilford, Agfa-Gevaert and Kodak.

As if to whisper to him that he's on the right track, the story of Agfa-Gevaert holds a most unexpected surprise. By a happy coincidence, Lucas Leffler unearths a "nugget": the story of two Gevaert employees who extracted between seven and thirteen kilos of silver per ton of mud from the muddy waters of a small river! Beyond the metaphor and mythological nature of the anecdote, the artist deduces that the concentration of silver residues in this mud could make it photosensitive. Between the imagined project and reality, some adjustments - and a few measurements of silver nitrate - are necessary. The photographer succeeds in fixing a permanent image on a plate of dried mud. With this series entitled Zilverbeek (silver stream), Lucas Leffler establishes himself as one of the most daring and innovative photographers of his generation. The enthusiasm is unanimous. Poet, magician and scientist, he takes the reproduction of an image into wild territories.

Another place, another story. Chalon-sur-Saône, home to two pillars of photographic heritage. Birthplace of Nicéphore Niépce, the town was also home to Kodak's factories since 1962. On site, Lucas Leffler points to a crucial year: 2007. It marked the collapse - literally and figuratively - of the film industry. Kodak's bankruptcy led the group to destroy its buildings. A few months earlier, the release of the first iPhone brutally revolutionised the cell phone industry. In the age of digital reign, Lucas Leffler is passionate about this technological transition, examining archival video footage of the implosion. In the massed crowd, arms are raised, armed with the first smartphones, almost ironically capturing the demise of an industry for which they were primarily responsible. These images of collapse provide food for thought. The particular case of Kodak resonates universally. Collapsology and collapse theory are the recurring motifs of a 21st century that began with the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Following on his images on mud plates, and with the all-consuming desire to tame obsolete and partly untameable techniques, Lucas Leffler tries his hand at wet collodion. An incredibly demanding artisanal process which, unlike traditional chemical reactions, whitens the emulsion spread on a black glass plate. An alchemist of the image, the photographer manages to divert the dark screens of cell phones to change them into photographic media. The networks of cracks accentuate the dramatic character of the images of collapse that he fixes on the surface of the screens. This multi-layered work can also be interpreted as a reflection on the ever-increasing obsolescence of our electronic devices. Conceptual memento mori or existential warning, technology does not only take over our lives. It appears as a collateral victim of its own frantic race for innovation. Lucas Leffler foreshadows their inescapable destiny: these 2007 iPhones, stripped of all functionality, become archaeological artefacts. Attempts at chronological disruption continually appear. Lucas Leffler willingly unsettles our temporal reference points by ageing materials, giving them a unique patina situating his works in an indeterminate past. An aesthetic of ruin, due in no small part to the cracks, oxidations and sediments that constantly intrude.

Even in their most installational or immersive forms, Lucas Leffler's works appear to us like so many modern fables about the passage from one state to another. Whether virtuous, with the transformation of mud into money, or disastrous, with this brutal fall that leads a once flourishing industry into decline... With the digital shift as its main focus, Lucas Leffler composes a bittersweet satire pointing out the drifts and side effects of globalisation.

Finally, the title of his first solo exhibition at Lee-Bauwens Gallery - Constellation of Nitrate - reflects his approach: polysemic. Sometimes distant in form, but never in substance, his works form a cosmic and coherent whole, with silver nitrate as the common denominator. Like the reagent, Constellation of Nitrate distils as many poetic fragments as caustic scents. These are works that lift us up, constantly reminding us that in beauty lies an element of toxicity. And vice versa.

Gwennaëlle Gribaumont
Art historian specialized in contemporary art
Art critic for Arts Libre (La Libre Belgique) and Collect AAA

Exhibited works
Photography by Lucas Leffler