Lara Dhondt's interest can be found in investigating and exploring different aspects of „la condition humaine“. She shifts her gaze to the essential, the beginning of things, the relationship between human and space, the nomadic before the sedentary.

 

In her photograph series Shelters of Refuse Dhondt follows the archaic need of shelter and protection, the vital human need to appropriate a personal, intimate space in this world. Therefore she uses what has now become part of a natural environment: abandoned materials, waste and drifting garbage. These found objects and materials which she discovers during her wanderings through the urban landscape are used to create spontaneous constructions of personal space - shelters. She photographs the installed shelter, a blueprint of the stable house, and leaves it behind as a public sculpture. The resulting photograph functions as a static document of temporary appropriation, the visible traces of an attempt at forming a temporary habitat. By using materials such as ecoboard or wood as support for the ultimate work she refers even further to the motif and its origin.

Besides the vital need of refuge, the necessity of refusal is another trigger within Dhondt's works. The spatial delimitation caused by building a shelter characterizes the fundamental need of refuge and the option of refusal and in stating this, the possibility to take control over one's own life. Inspired by Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space and Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Nomadism, the poetic idea plays a central role in this creation of intimate space and shelter.

 

Martin Mlecko is wandering through life just as Lara Dhondt, with the difference, that he is interested in private space and its hidden secrets and undiscovered treasures. As a romantic conceptual artist or poetical documentarist as he could be described, he is searching for pictures to redefine reality and give ordinary objects an appropriate regard and new facet of perception.

 

In The Things of Life, a since 1994 ongoing series of black and white photographs, Mlecko portraits everyday objects in his own private surrounding. The pictures appear specific and private as individual object as well as in the photographic view to the particular object. In their joint presentation they gain in addition the character of the universal and timeles. Place, time and authorship of the photographs seem undefined. The atmosphere is determined by the balance between an austere harmony and emotional archiving that lets arise rooms of mind wandering.

 

 

In his series Evidence Mlecko addresses a particular human relationship to a very specific type of inanimated object: The book. It is expressly conceived of as a medium for preserving memories, information and imagination, exchange and dialogue, and which more or less presents the intellectual inventory of individuals in materialised form. In this series of private libraries, Mlecko first undertakes a photographic survey of each library, takes photographs on the spot from various angles and distances, turns to a certain detail at a later point in time and ultimately collages pictures from his memory, pointing out the uniqueness of each individual library. The  photographic montages are a statement of the intellectual state of their owners. Individual developments, secrets and interests are archived and documented. The final library reminds of a collage of its owners life itself. The artists main interest lies on the contents and aesthetical interaction of these collected, horted, assorted and shelved books.

 

The works of Lara Dhondt and Martin Mlecko seem objectively and documenting at first glance, but when taking a closer look, the poetic approach prevails. With stirring empathy, their photographic dialogues testify to the existence of the extraordinary inherent life of the things. Two important aspects of the debate are worth noting within this context as they are of fundamental importance to the works exhibited by both Lara Dhondt and Martin Mlecko: the endeavour to establish a home for oneself within this world, by having particular relationships to objects and by the creation of private spaces (libraries or shelters) on the one hand, and the perception that objects undergo a kind of ‘enrichment’ through the presence of or contact with human beings and that this serves the human need for personalization and appropriation of the surrounding world on the other.