Artist
Dirk Hardy
Dirk Hardy (1989, NL) is interested in the relationship people enter into with their environment and with each other. With Vivarium, an ongoing project that took-off in 2018, Hardy constructs hyperrealistic "purposeful fiction": contemporary worlds that express the complexity of our zeitgeist.
With his tableaus Hardy welcomes the viewer to a multitude of worlds. In his creative process he draws from a web of observations, memories and imagination, and responds to both large and small events in the world. He explores the complexity of life in an idiosyncratic and compassionate way and in doing so, aims to increase our social sensitivity.
Hardy studied Architecture at Eindhoven University of Technology and afterwards Photography at the Willem de Kooning Academy. He is nominated for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2021 (UK), and launches Vivarium in the accompanying exhibition. His first solo is planned for the end of 2021 in museum MOYA (NL). In 2019 he showed his work for the first time on an international stage during Photo Basel.
Void
The series Void shows my fascination for the everyday life and hidden moments. After my graduation I lived in New York City for a while, a city that counts sixty thousand elevators. Together, these elevators make eleven billion trips a year, thirty million trips a day and at this moment. over twenty thousand invisible moments are about to be lost in time and space.
Vivarium
Vivarium is the collective name for terrariums, aquariums and other recreated ecosystems in which animals are kept for observation. In Hardy's Vivarium it is precisely people who, lost in thought, are publicly exposed. Each tableau, or Episode, has its own theme and is like a cryptogram that shows its true nature when you decipher the code. For example, Episode 3 confronts us with the glorification of the Dutch colonial past by means of a ticket office for the VOC Swing-ship De Achilles. In Episode 4 we discover that Andrea, the owner of an Italian cinema, is struggling with his culturally defined role as a man, as we see how he dreams of freeing himself from this defined gender identity in Episode 5.
The scenes feel lifelike thanks to Hardy's hyper-realistic working method: he designs, builds and photographs sets where he fuses even the smallest details into a poetic narrative. Next he makes photomontages which are then shown life-size - one-on-one - in a light box with a window frame. The construction of each of these contemporary "trompe-l'oeils" takes 3 to 4 months.
Within this project, we have been selecting every year a number of 5 artists to represent what we believed to be interesting and worthy in photography at that moment. This year, we have decided upon new names from different countries: Dirk Hardy, John Robokos, Pascual Rosales, Sara Meinz, and Younes Mohammad. Their work has been carefully analysed and selected during an online portfolio review judged by international curators, to represent Photo Romania in Futures 2021.
Dirk Hardy is a photographer that shows a strong understanding of how to develop and present projects. Although a young artist, he understands how to build a
project and to visually present it to the audience. We particularly liked his Void project, which has been featured several times in international events, including an exhibition in Romania.
John Robokos is a Greek artist specialised in instant street photography. We chose his work because he attempts and succeeds in capturing beauty in dark and
depressing urban landscapes.
Pascual Rosales is a Spanish photographer focused on using visual storytelling about the stories that each of us can carry inside. His project Salt eats stone is a story about the people and the places consumed by time, where salt is the substitute for the passage of time.
Sara Meinz is another Spanish photographer whose work strives for documentary and portraiture. Through her work, she seeks the hidden messages of ordinary life, often exploring society, the human-made landscape, and nature’s resilience.
Younes Mohammad is a Kurdish freelance photographer working and telling the stories of the people that live in his country. Younes hopes that, through this work of exploring conflict and post-conflict humanitarian issues, the world may better understand what these people and their families have given for the Kurdish people, the region, and, in fact, for the world.