Projects
Flux
evolving bas-relief painting
multiple paraffin waxes, pigments, wood
dimensions 360 cm x 100 cm
images: Festival Normandie Impressionniste
Snowmelt
SNOWMELT is a series of evolving bas-relief paintings made of wax, a malleable, transitory material that undergoes metamorphosis depending on the temperature, emphasising the work's ephemeral symbolism.
The melting snow we're talking about here is, in its true physical composition, an aggregate of water particles in solid form, whose appearance is the most delicate and intangible: the flakes.
Here, the accumulation of wax particles, similar to snow captured as it prepares to change state, symbolizes the transition between the solidity of ice and the fluidity of water, and is an image of fragility. The material's whiteness and velvety texture convey a sense of purity and tranquillity.
Like snow disappearing in the heat, our lives are marked by moments of transition, dissolution and renewal.
It is the idea of impermanence that characterizes this work.Snowmelt 01
evolving bas-relief painting
multiple paraffin waxes, pigments, wood
dimensions 46 cm x 62 cm
Snowmelt 02
evolving bas-relief painting
multiple paraffin waxes, pigments, wood
dimensions 33 cm x 40 cm
Snowmelt 03
evolving bas-relief painting
multiple paraffin waxes, pigments, wood
dimensions 17 cm x 22 cm
Snowmelt 04
evolving bas-relief painting
multiple paraffin waxes, pigments, wood
dimensions 16 cm x 20 cm
Snowmelt 05
evolving bas-relief painting
multiple paraffin waxes, pigments, wood
dimensions 15 cm x 18 cm
Snowmelt 06
evolving bas-relief painting
multiple paraffin waxes, pigments, wood
dimensions 12 cm x 12 cm
Snowmelt 07
evolving bas-relief painting
multiple paraffin waxes, pigments, wood
dimensions 61 cm x 95 cm
Narcisses
dynamic, unpredictable evolving images
digital system, screen, cotton fabric
images: Festival Normandie Impressionniste
The Sea (9,000 images)
dynamic, unpredictable evolving images
digital system, projection or screen
SUPERPOSITIONS
In search of the duality of photography and video, short films (from a few seconds to a few minutes) are converted into still images which then are superimposed. They become photographic prints by merging hundreds or thousands of individual images, distorted by the motion of their dynamic source.
These prints are both real and abstract, revealing the complexity of interpreting a facial expression or a landscape. Everything seems to change, but at the same time everything remains as it is. Time is annihilated in the process.
These are the images of our memories. Everything appears to be blurred and indistinct. It is the only thing we possess, yet it is inevitably lost.
SUPERPOSITIONS: Mother 01
sublimation print on fabric
dimensions 210 cm x 165 cm
SUPERPOSITIONS: The Burning Fields
photographic prints
variable dimensions
Memories
20 photographic prints on titanium plates
dimensions of each print 29 cm x 36 cm
MEMORIES is a series of 20 portraits printed on titanium plates.
MEMORIES is based on thousands of hyper-realistic close-ups of faces created through a complex digital synthesis process. These random photographs of imagined personalities have been carefully selected, collected, indexed, and classified. Each portrait consists of thousands of images that have been superimposed and compiled using specially developed software.
The multitude of faces seems to merge into one phantom-like face that is hardly perceptible. In these diffuse, vague representations, we seem to recognize a familiar face or a face that reminds us of someone. Due to their metallic nature, the images do not appear static. They change with the viewpoint of the observer. Altered faces are revealed. They suddenly disappear and are lost. What emerges from the blurred memories?
The varying colorimetric densities of the portraits result from the different numbers of superimposed images, which correspond to the distribution of age groups within a population.
The portraits are printed on titanium plates, a material that is lightweight but very strong. It is both ethereal and an armor against oblivion.
The Phantom Machine
dynamic, unpredictable evolving images
digital system, projection or screen
A collection of thousands of photos, either taken by the artists or carefully selected and categorized from the internet, provide the basis for THE PHANTOM MACHINE.
These images are portraits, close-ups of faces. A software merges these faces into each other resulting in a constantly evolving flux of images.
New phantom-like faces emerge only to disappear immediately, absorbed by another, a fleeting vision that will leave only the impression of an outline. It will be the face of all faces, the blurred face of memories. A machine that feeds on faces, that creates new faces.
sample recording of THE PHANTOM MACHINEDemography
photographic prints
SUDDEN
SUDDEN is a series of photographic-video portraits, silent, ephemeral. It oscillates between photography and video. They seem to be static, but are in constant evolution.
The images are generated live and evolve thanks to a specially developed software. The chosen intense moment extends over a predetermined ephemeral period: from a few hours up to 30 years, the lifetime of a generation.
The evolution of the video images is imperceptible. To understand their progression, the viewer must turn away for a while.
This work is both a metaphorical representation of time and a physical experience for the observer.
SUDDEN: Electra
single channel video / digital art installation, no sound
digital system, projection or screen
duration: minimum 12 hours, up to 30 years
ELECTRA is a close-up of a face, in the beginning so perfect that one is left with the impression that it is the face of a doll. The image section gradually changes. The camera scans the face and reveals completely new aspects. The face unfolds. Is it a woman, a man? The viewer witnesses this development which eventually ends in degeneration.
images: Nuit Blanche Paris
SUDDEN: Maly
2-channel video / digital art installation, no sound
digital system, projection or screen
duration: minimum 12 hours, up to 30 years
MALY unveils a birth. Two screens are opposite one another. On the one hand, there is the face of the woman suffering while giving birth; on the other, her child named MALY who comes into the world each day, little by little.
The moment chosen begins with the expulsion of the child and ends when MALY is totally out of his mother’s womb. This moment is portrayed from one angle on the first screen by the increasingly acute ecstatic pain shown on the mother's face. And from a different angle on the second screen with the gradual appearance of the child's body. These two views begin and conclude together when the body of the baby is totally out of the mother's body; when the countdown, that is, the remaining lifetime for MALY, has started.
images: Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels
SUDDEN: Guards (Europe)
10-channel video / digital art installation, no sound
digital system, projection or screen
duration: minimum 12 hours, up to 30 years
Ten video portraits of military guards (English, Monegasque, Portuguese and Belgian) will keep watch from dawn to dawn, day after day.
As time goes on, this maniacal surveillance will evolve and disintegrate. Their headgear, symbol of their importance, will hinder them. Their ability to stand in a fixed position, symbol of their strength, will cause them pain.
This maniacal surveillance sometimes seems to turn towards the onlookers, sometimes towards the comrade who is watching on a screen to the side. The esprit de corps disintegrates and suspicion of the others and one another, reaches its peak in order to plunge back into solitude and the difficulty of holding onto the time that is needed.
SUDDEN: Ana
single channel video / digital art installation, no sound
digital system, projection or screen
duration: minimum 12 hours, up to 30 years
ANA is celebrating a birthday. Two children are about to blow out the candles on a cake. Behind this apparent cosiness of the moment, tension mounts.
images: Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels
Leftovers
single channel video or 3-channel video installation, with sound
projection or screen
duration: 17 minutes (looped)
LEFTOVERS is a video that shows a family dinner which is shared by a mother and her two daughters.
The table is a collection of anachronistic elements: a Chinese tablecloth, glasses and a carafe, cutlery and silver plates.
These anachronisms are reflected in the characters. These three women seem to dine together and share the same meal, but the table, cut digitally into three indistinct pieces, does not present the same time for each of the characters. It is an allegory of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The courses, limited in quantity, are chosen for the periods of life they represent and for the utensils they require.
The impression that there is a communication between the three is misleading. They seem to look at each other, but don't see each other. Each of them remains in their solitude.
This meal, a cultural and social ritual, is also the image of the difficulty of helping oneself, of taking one's place, of observing and judging. It highlights the difficulty of using language in expressing one’s own universe to others.
images: Nuit Blanche Paris
Red
single channel video / digital art installation, with sound
digital system, projection
dimension: oversized in relation to the space in which the projection takes place
duration: the images are generated continuously, without repetition, without recurrence
The face of a dreamer, who at first seems contemplative, loses mental balance. His thoughts drift to violence, consuming all his mental and physical powers. He becomes absorbed.
A specially designed libre arbitre mechanism allows a machine to decide when and how these irruptions of angry thoughts, dreams, and oppressive worlds will erupt. What is caused by our own will and what is not?
These images of violence invade this face and transform it into an angry and hateful figure.
The oppressive images that give this video their rhythm, their rapidity and the constant tension, as well as the evolution of the sound, create an audio-visual conflict. It causes the viewer to become blind and a powerless witness of these inner and outer conflicts.
sample recording of RED
COMPOSITIONS
In the movie industry's postproduction, node-based visual programming languages are used to create special effects. These very complex scripts generate visual effects like explosions, bullet impacts, bleeding wounds etc.
The scripts are represented by node graphs, still images themselves, fixed in time, which resemble delicate structures, rhizomes that reveal the movement of the image sequence. They decrypt time. They are portraits of the creation of moving images.
The depiction focuses on structures, compositions, which are used in real motion pictures and represent very short, fast-moving moments.
Different techniques are used to display them: static photographic prints, and dynamic video projections which become meta videos. Other techniques, like painting or stained glass, symbols of craftsmanship, art, religion and slowness, might seem anachronistic. But these compositions, which require several weeks or months of elaboration for one second of film, are a digital craft that also elevates the image to the rank of dogma.
COMPOSITIONS: Blood Explosion
photographic print on metallic paper
dimensions 85 cm x 200 cm
COMPOSITIONS: Bullet Impact
software generated video, no sound
digital system, projection or screen
duration: 1.4 seconds, looped permanently
COMPOSITIONS: Earth Explosion
stained glass with copper foil, laser engraving, painting
dimensions 200 cm x 100 cm
TRANSITIONS
TRANSITIONS is a series of video films. They approach the invisible and elusive part of our being. These videos, with sound, ranging from 3 to 18 minutes, show transitions in the lives of human beings such as aging, a coma or lost memory.
TRANSITIONS: The Night
video film, color, with sound
duration: 17 minutes 40 seconds
The Night - is it really that dark? Or is the Night the victim of our inability to see through it? We are deaf and blind, we can see at night, we are clairvoyant. We are dead and we are alive. The Night - is it black, luminous or white?
TRANSITIONS: And then love
video film, color, with sound
duration: 14 minutes 20 seconds
To stroke a dog, to caress. To caress as a sign of tenderness. To caress someone with the hand, with the lips, to pamper, to cuddle, to hug, to kiss. To caress, to touch lightly, to skim, to fondle, to pat, to tickle, to titillate, to touch, to paw, to penetrate.
TRANSITIONS: Lucie sleeps
video film, color, with sound
duration: 5 minutes 07 seconds
Being epileptic. Dissect the head, cut the brain's sick part out, close again. To wake up, not shaking any more, but being without any memories.
TRANSITIONS: Lucie gets up
video film, color, with sound
duration: 4 minutes 44 seconds
Being epileptic. Dissect the head, cut the brain's sick part out, close again. To wake up, not shaking any more, but being without any memories.
TRANSITIONS: Yvonne, Marie, Madeleine... 89 years old, war orphan
video film, color, with sound
duration: 16 minutes 32 seconds
language: French with English subtitles
For an exhibition Catherine Menoury was commissioned by the city of Brussels to produce a documentary film about the residents of the city's Quartier Nord. It is a report about the neighborhood’s residents who had been evicted from their apartments because of the "Manhattan" project. One of them was named Yvonne. She died 6 months after the filming. Her search in the memories of her past, in her documents and photos, her grief and her scars were captured on film.
Based on this intense encounter, Catherine Menoury developed another work, a mixture of documentary and artistic work, to approach and depict an intangible part: the search for oneself.
Yvonne was the first female graphic designer in Brussels. We owe her, among other things, the artwork for the beer "Perle 28", the "Palm" beer, the "Welt" cigarettes. Behind the traces of the war and its traumas, we also look at the history of Brussels.
