Born in 1986 from a
Belgian mother and a Polish father, Idalie de Werszowec Rey was brought up in
two worlds with a composite cultural heritage. Since her young age she has been
exposed to different forms of art (opera, ballet, piano lessons) which has
influenced her sensitivity to art, its beauty and the feelings it conveys.
All along her day to
day work, she keeps in touch with art attending Académie d’Etterbeek in
Illustration classes, then Académie de Watermael-Boitsfort with painting
classes, and lately also Ecole des Arts de Braine-l’Alleud with pratiques
expérimentales.
Lately, in an attempt
to distance herself from her figurative work in painting, she has been taking
pictures which she then transformed, in order to distance herself from the
object captured and to approach color and form in another dimension. Over time,
this work ceased to be a pretext for a painting, but a graphic research in
itself.
Idalie takes pictures
of nature, what captures her attention is the shape of the leaves, the delicacy
of their design; the curve of a branch, its bearing and elegance. She finds
them in the compositions offered by weeds invading an embankment, between
nettles and wild grasses, brambles, ivy, ferns and even dead leaves. The
latter, dried out, are twisted into improbable positions with an elegance and
presence of their own.
The main subject of her work is nature, and more particularly
plants, the ones we don't pay much attention to, the ones we pull out in
well-kept gardens...
Idalie wants to highlight this beauty, unloved by ordinary passers-by,
and give it a place among the bouquets of 17th-century tulips.
To do this, she chooses intertwined elements, with leaves of different
shapes, compositions with dynamic lines, in search of an almost sensual
elegance.
The principles on which is based her work is that:
1/ the human eye can only perceive three primary colors of light: red,
green and blue, therefore all colors that we see are composed of those three;
2/ the perception of colors is eminently subjective.
By adjusting the levels of those three colors, she changes the
perception of the world around us.
Playing with the color parameters, looking for the bright or dreamy hue,
just as if she was standing in front of a canvas with her palette, she adorns
these plants with unexpected shades, until she reaches a new balance, far from
the diktat of chlorophyll.
From there, it's just a short step to forgetting the form and the
subject, and retaining only the colors that blend into each other. They are
reminiscent of the light that passes through a stained-glass window and fades,
coloring whatever is in its path. Or the blotches to which shapes are reduced
when we squint, dazzled by the light...
What she wants is for passers-by to be captivated by the colors and for
their eyes to wander from one leaf to the next in the maze of intertwined
leaves and branches; for the colors to envelop them and evoke an emotion, so
that they don't pass by unaffected, just as she was seized, drawn away from her
everyday life.
