EL PATRON

Every individual to me is fascinating. Yet, there are people who has just got that extra something. Their personalities are just shining a bit stronger than everybody else's.

This series is dedicated to the bosses out there. The radiant lights, whom – just by their very presence – illuminate the screens, the canvases and reality! Some of them had a significant impact on my childhood. Some just make me feel something, whenever I see them on the screen or in the street. They can be a famous person or they can be someone living just a few blocks away from me. One of the – to me – distinguishing features of all these strong personalities is their gaze. For this reason these pieces also need to be mainly black and white. It makes the motif somewhat more serious – if not sinister. And most importantly perhaps, it makes the gaze that much more intense by way of the pure contrasts and simplicity in coloring.

But back to our protagonists! One can be a gangster boss on screen or in reality. Another one can be a friend from childhood and yet a third can be the local jetset vagabond. It has nothing to do with background, titles, religion, skin color or nationality. The common distinguishing feature is that special look (in their eyes)! It feels as if they know something the rest of us don't know. As if they are above all the daily trials and tribulations.

By repeated focus on these bosses we might not only be able to learn something. To me the repetition does something extraordinary.

A collective pattern emerges – not only from the stoke but from the echo as well. It creates a coherent narrative, telling the story of the personalities and their gaze.

QUANG