Bios of founders and members of Artflame Noir

Alexander Lance

Born in former Yugoslavia, this naturalized Belgian artist has a wide variety of work behind him. From composing awarded music pieces for theater to installations and body performance, he found his main form of expression in video arts and combination of physical theater and multimedia.

He worked as a director, cameraman and editor for different production houses, until founding Artflame Noir in 2007.

His work was majorly influenced by interests in human psychology, darkness of human soul and echoes of the war he’s been through during his adolescent years.

He was awarded several times for his composing work in theater , and took part in many of European art festivals. Most of his work challenged the perception of art, explored and proved the interaction of the audience with the art pieces whether it was installation, video or a live performance.

His most prominent conceptual art works include “The Insult Box” where the video loop kept insulting the audience at the gallery for being there.
The statement “I am a piece of art – you are a piece of shit…” was deliberately made to observe the behavior of the audience to something said into the camera, with no awareness who will see and hear it.

“This boy Is on Fire” was one of his first performances, where dowsed in petrol, he burned while reciting the poetry of Baudelaire, Yeats and Bukowski.

In his short documentary “In Head” (praised by legendary director Abel Ferrara) he posed the question, based on sentences on conceptual art by sol Le Vit - If perception is subjective, and audience sees whatever they want to see…. Should artists approach their work with a certain attitude or a message they want to convey

ELLIE VAN DEN BRANDE

By now i have evolved into a 32 year old girl, because i refuse to grow up completely, photographer. I love : making art, working as a team, the macabre, things out of the ordinary, raw emotions and so on.

Artists or collectives that particularly inspired me are for example but not limited to: Chris Cunningham (if you don’t know this genius http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Chris+Cunningham) , Marina Abramovic, Erwin Olaf, Eugenio Recuenco, Dali, Magritte, Pre-Raphaelites and a whole lot of others which my amnesia currently does not allow me to remember by name.

As with so many artists, my interest was already sparked at young age, I’m not necessarily special on that point. I quickly discovered i loved drawing and would loose myself in action for hours, so did my parents.

I tend to work neat (I don’t easily spill paint or anything, this doesn’t mean I am a neat person though), so as soon as i got my first digital camera, experimentation became nr1 on the bucket list.

I photographed literally everything that was slightly interesting to me. Later on the necessity rose to start manipulating these images into something out of my imagination. I wanted to influence the viewer, not just document what i saw. Rather really make others feel what i felt.

Although that is a very arrogant thing to expect, some of my art made people feel sick or really uneasy or shocked or moved, so i did make them feel something; mission accomplished.

Working to pay the bills, made me realize I only want to do more really crazy creative stuff. I want to break more boundaries, more more more and more…

That’s why I started doing underwater photography with a new collective ParticlesH2O, everything is different underwater, there’s a certain mood about it. A certain feeling it provokes, this will definitely be a field to explore much further.

ArtFlameNoir

I loved working with the guys from ArtFlameNoir, it gave me the space to try out directing, experimenting with video, working as a D.O.P, a graphic designer, photographer and helping out on production where I could.

I guess you could say I felt right where I ought to be as one of the steady team members.

I always had an interest the field of movies, but never really fell into a full on exploratory mode because the big scary production necessities going into making film. Since I am quite the little perfectionist, it is often hard to let go when things don’t turn out the way you had imagined them. Luckily this is something you learn to deal with over time.

Either that or you Photoshop the hell out of it


FREDERIK SEBASTIAN VERMEULEN