Community Hospital Exhibiting Artist & Artwork
Christophe Demaitre // Scaffolding
Scaffolding, 2015
Mixed Media Installation
Limited edition of 1The “caged” and “housed” sculptural objects are subject to various environments: organic, technological & synthetic. The miniature and figurative are employed at an optimal application in the “Museum” series where the pivotal object (cast, found or otherwise) is given “visual audience” by supplemental figures whom observe in an interrogation of object/object within confined environment prior to our being able to observe our own role as “witness” to their static intervention.
Later works possess architectural constructs as device for more elaborate intentions of intervention (it is important to note that the miniature modules are in fact prototypes for an intended conceptualist series wherein the physical spectator is invited to directly intervene with the sculptural object rendered in massive scale as a land-art creation) as the collective audience would be able to move freely upon the surrounding bridge/walkways of wooden stairs which encase the “encased” creations, offering a performative intervention in a mediation between object/observer.
R.A. Suri
Christophe Demaître is a Belgian artist who splits the year between Brussels and Shanghai. Despite popularity and a general public familiarity with his work, the distinction of focus between “painter” and “photographer” remains quite blurred in Demaître’s case. He studied plastic arts as an apprentice in Europe, most notably in Rik Vermeersch and Michaël Borreman’s studios. He currently works out of Studio Demaître, at the M50 art district on Moganshan Lu.
After moving to Shanghai in 2006, Demaître now spends half of his year in the city, where he first began to incorporate multimedia technologies into his work. He crosshatches the effects of personality between person and landscape. In the life and death of space, his work allows a chat about character. Through bifurcated exhibition, he often presents one half of his yearly life to the other. His work presents urban landscapes, from city skylines to restaurant-bars, and points a hard-to-see finger at the means of human incorporation within them. The role of a structure in the creation of a self-important space is somewhere in there, with humans to slouch and slide about haphazardly. How do we fit into this world? Ask him. He won’t tell you.
Demaître took an early interest in photographic research while also traveling extensively through Asia early in his career. With photogenic perspective, he began to gain recognition as a painter. Since then, he has baffled and dual-aligned the two disciplines. The work he produces resemble what you might called “little treasures.” Through photography and painting, he meticulously constructs obscured image. This produces a distinct hunger for information from the viewer. His work is academic and wonderfully organized, though withholding. In installations, he presents concise structures that photograph beautifully but can only be properly viewed from quite close. It’s all very domineering.