Melvin Pattyn
Melvin Pattyn is a Belgian architect, installation and visual artist, designer and creative thinker. Although his baggage has mainly been fed by architecture, he wants to unfold his range more widely and further explore his fascinations for space, moving image, the object, the drawing, the story, the body, … He wants to walk the thin line between art and architecture, with his fascination for the human body in the centre in relation to spaces. The body as spectator, as (moving) object, as participant, as space. As an installation artist, interested in the narrative and layeredness of spaces both in their physical and metaphorical manifestations, Melvin builds site-specific installations, objects, scale models, … that question the boundaries of identity. His work explores the relationship between the body, in eternal transformation, and its (in)tangible context. As a visual artist, Melvin creates pieces with a technique he calls soot painting. It allows him to use a flame of a candle as a brush to create paintings with the soot traces that remain on the white paper. By using all kinds of tools, mainly brushes, parts of the soot are wiped away and shapes appear on the canvas. Spontaneity is key in the creative, slow process. He opens himself to the experience and lets the medium lead him. Losing himself in the momentum of the creative process in combination with the fluidity of the black soot results in a sequence of images formed by light and shadow. The long time that is consumed by the piece makes room for an intense but tender dialogue between artist and work of art.