The Blind Beast

First, we shall slide easily from a place represented to an imaginary place. - I mean that these Spaces that can, in theory, contain us, become spaces we contain. This seemingly protective refuge, those precarious shelters, those homes diverted from their role of safety, are nothing more than rickety boxes in our troubled mind - they are mental boxes. Mental worries of the individual constantly torn between the desire to open himself to the world and explore it, and the fear of being hurt or destroyed by its contact. Then, we notice great distress in the images of Michel Le Belhomme. We arrive on the scene after a catastrophe has taken place creating a certain traumatism. Everyday spaces have been vandalizsed by natural or artificial forces, or both. Where thus is one to find hope in this desolate universe? Fascination for these photographs is therefore a result of their strange form as well as their ambiguous discourse. Opposing forces create a dynamic tension that crosses these falsely static places: emptiness and fullness, loss and profusion, outer and private, dream and nightmare, order and chaos, freedom and confinement, etc. This work is indeed pertinent because of its power of suggestion - for nothing is said directly - which takes us from the personal anecdote to the existential anguish that is more universal: no one is safe from the swell that can carry us both towards reason and towards delirium. Beware of the inner storm!

― Eric Van Essche