EXTRA MUROS: Visite Herzele – Beyond words
Untitled is a monumental portrait, with Philip Huyghe (in mask) posing with his parents. The mother-figure stands central; a woman of middle-age in very stereotypical dress, cast in a recognizable situation: the bourgeois salon. Enlarged sculptural objects like the baking moulds, the children's clothes and the wallpaper also refer to this matriarchal presence. The father-figure stands somewhat off to the side. He presents a rather neutral protagonist, someone who is undergoing the situation.
However, the image of domestic serenity, of the security of family life, becomes disturbed. First of all, by the doubling of the mother-figure. The artist himself sits on the sofa next to his mother, dressed in identical clothing and assuming the same pose. He wears a mask that has the facial traits of each melding together. Furthermore, the middle-class room's appointments also run counter to the cliché image: what at first sight appear to be everyday objects are manipulated. They are not household objects, but rather art works by Philip Huyghe. From this meeting of the everyday with the incongruous, the amiable with the grim, a field of tension is created. The rug is pulled out from under familiarity by the bizarre elements present in the image. The secure certainties of a 'home port' become undermined.
The work fits within the search for the artist's identity. An investigation that is pursued throughout his entire oeuvre, and this in consistently recurring motifs. Through the analysis and transformation of things domestic and familiar, Huyghe delves into his own identity and history. Philip Huyghe plays with the relationship between perception and reality, and with the rapport between work of art and the public. Untitled is full of ambiguities: it is at once a family portrait and a masquerade, a salon and an exhibition space... The artist juggles with patterns of expectation, clichés and stereotypes. The anomalies in the image force the viewer to hone his/her vision.