Mira Sanders goes DIY

The Brussels artist Mira Sanders has often taken up architectural and spatial themes. And up to a point that is also the case with her current exhibition at the VidalCuglietta gallery. Sanders takes as her starting point some found photographs dating from the 1950s and 1960s: pictures from DIY magazines that show how to put things together. She crops the photographs in such a way that the emphasis comes to be on the hands of the people involved. What exactly they are cobbling together is out of sight, which creates a feeling of alienation that is heightened by the dated source material. After being cut out, the images are stuck onto pieces of cardboard or aluminium.
The artist goes on to develop the objects the DIY’ers are holding into geometric figures, not merely reinterpreting the images but also indicating the lines of perspective of the work. In this way, she reveals the internal construction of the image. To that end she plays with both form and colour. In the case of a man screwing a frame onto a wall, she continues the lines of the frame outside the picture, while a purple stripe shows the direction of his gaze. A curved pipe being held by a woman is extended as an angular, geometric construction, while a blue line divides the picture in two. Sanders creates slightly alienating, lively collages with room both for a study of perspective and for imagination. Her works, moreover, are not restricted to a flat surface: in the case of one photograph, for example, she stretches the line of perspective across a wall, so that the work steps outside its frame. She also presents a number of photographs as freestanding 3-D objects that, as a result, live a life of their own in the gallery space.

Mira Sanders: Lignes de Fuite > 15/3, wo/me/We > za/sa/Sa 12 > 18.30, GALERIE VIDALCUGLIETTA, boulevard Barthélémylaan 5D, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-502.53.20, www.vidalcuglietta.com