From Chiaroscuro to the Flemish Masters
The first step of this project comprises a photo session of each Titan with a typical attribute, through which medium five conceptual art photographers – Maarten Devoldere, Joost Demuynck, Karel Waignein, Bart Colson and Louise Oosterlynck– capture their interpretation of each personality in a chiaroscuro photograph.
Hervé Missiaen then translates the inspiration derived by these photographs into a series of lifelike portraits, in which the artist uses very old tubes of paint. These originate from the authentic workshops of Léon De Smet (+1966) , an expressionist icon of the Second Latem School. This old paint unites the Flemish Masters of the past with the Flemish Titans of today into a unique homage.
It is important to understand that this project does not worship the Titans as such. It only worships all the hardworking Flemish people who helped and brought the Titans to their position of today.
Each portrait has a dark and a bright side, thus describing the duality that everyone carries within them: the dark, unresolved weight of grief and misfortune; balanced against the intellectual victory over negativity.