With this new series, Luc Praet continues the research he started with the ALTERED project, whose first two installments, Chapter I and Chapter II, unveiled in 2020, and then Several Heads, exhibited in 2022, explored themes of memory, the resonance of memories, and the artist's role in the creative process. Faced with the persistent question: "Isn't everything we create just an eternal reinterpretation?" he seems to delight in offering new perspectives each time, allowing the audience the freedom to form their own ideas, to feel and to discover within themselves the emotion evoked by his works, and to immerse themselves in the game.
The game, echoing the title of this new series of the ALTERED project, cleverly named The Players, seems to encourage Luc Praet to push the boundaries of the artistic experience even further. In this unique and bewildering adventure, we are faced with a particular demand, in which the artist skillfully manipulates our perceptions as spectators: can we really be sure of what we see? Luc Praet manages to transport us from the classical to the most contemporary repertoire, challenging the eye to adapt, to seek understanding, and to uncover the reality behind appearances.
Through a series of prints, the photographer reveals the richness of a nested narrative that is both pictorial and postural. Art is presented as an infinitely repeating cycle, an invitation to imagine what precedes the artistic act. It is a game but also an "I," that of the artist, which remains the guiding thread of the work that Luc Praet develops through his exhibitions. It is also the game of the artists who preceded him and those who will follow, with the underlying message that art is a place of transmission, transformation, and elevation. The "players" presented in this new series of photographs are not only those we visually distinguish but also those who reinvent our perception of the world, and Luc Praet undeniably positions himself among them.
Marie Lemeland