Dek Unu Magazine - Lieven Neirinck

The images in “Everyday Burn Out” are organized around Belgian artist-photographer Lieven Neirinck's return “to earth” after two years of exhaustion from “turbulent life at crazy speed.” A film and photography professor for 40 years, Neirinck's approach is like that of a director who imagines, scripts, designs, constructs, and acts in his art. He describes each work as a "frozen" performance; each photograph summarizes and consolidates a time and the sequence of actions that convey an emotion and embody an idea. These images are richly cinematic arrangements of details, backgrounds, and human subjects, illuminated by masterfully-placed strobes, projectors, spots, floods, and flashlit brushstrokes. All are rendered in jewel-like color against deep shadows, all mysterious, all deeply affecting. The magician's vivid, directional light always catches the narrow edge between the everyday and the very thoroughly surreal. His astonishing diary deserves a careful and lingering visit.