Colourful flowers float in a dense universe of lines and forms. They are little gems in a transparent pool of unknown powers, symbolising subconscious emotions drifting through our lives. Once a painter, Belgian artist Isabelle Menin made her floral tableaus with many digitally combined shots. For her, flowers are the torchbearers of beauty, but at the same time, they depict our ever-swirling thoughts. “I twist and deform the flowers in the same way as our thoughts work.”

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Menin’s work shows abundant colourful flowers floating through a peaceful universe, blasting energy and twirling around each other like animated entities. There seems to be a void of gravity, no above and under, no left or right. We look at a universe beyond the severity of the earth’s life. “Flowers are beautiful, and everyone loves them. They speak to the heart. If you look closely at one, you will realise it is very organic and alive. Flowers are like little characters and are very sensual. We humans have a physical relationship with them. For me, they are the most primal expression of beauty.”

Also, as a painter, Menin always worked with elements from nature. “I did a lot of paintings with tulips based on the idea of still life because I didn't like working with the human figure. I've always preferred working with elements of nature, flowers or plants and leaves and often with references to the past, antiquity, the Renaissance, and earlier periods of art.”

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Flowers as forms and emotions

Despite the concrete use of flowers as the primal subject matter, they are mainly used in their manifestations as pure form, just like Plato described the essential ideas of things in real life. “My work isn't about flowers. I use flowers like a painter would use colour palettes. I distort and transform them. Sometimes, you can't even recognise the flower. I use the material, colour, and texture and mix them all up. Sometimes, it's the flower I want to show, but I distort it to show an emotion, feeling and sensation. It becomes a reality that I distort to recreate abstract landscapes.”

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In the floating landscapes, the flower seems to be a metaphor for our subconscious mind, inner world, and feelings. The floral landscapes relate to our internal life, in which the flowers mirror our minds. “I call my work interior photography. I twist and deform the flowers in the same way as our thoughts work. Our thoughts never stop; they're always moving—always in motion. There's constant movement in our subconscious mind, and things get twisted and intertwined. Flowers are exactly like the movement of our thoughts and emotions. The flower is a sensation.”

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Life and death

As humans who share the same biological rhythm of life and death with the flowers, it touches on the central theme in the work of Isabelle Menin. “Life is a mystery. In any case, for me, life is a total incomprehensible mystery. We live, we are, and we go. We don't know why we die. There's this path between birth and death, which is often painful, too, and therein lies a consolation. Art is what allows us not to despair. I think art saves humanity from sadness, grief, and violence. Likewise, my work speaks of life and death because art expresses life in the face of death. We could even see the artworks as therapy, helping us understand and deal with life. I don't know whether my work gives life meaning. I think it does. Because even though I don't know what life means, I know art gives it meaning. That's why it comforts us because life is painful and difficult. Art allows us to see the beauty of life. Is life beautiful? For me, life is not beautiful, but art is beautiful.”

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Stendhal syndrome

We could ask what beauty in its essence really is. Beauty brings comfort and consolation. Beauty is aesthetically perceived, but it also has a psychological counterpart. Beauty is form, but it's also spiritual. So, what is the essence of the beauty for Isabelle Menin? “Beauty is a difficult concept to understand. Great philosophers like Immanuel Kant have asked questions about beauty. For me, beauty is a mystery. Stendhal, a French writer, went to visit Florence and fell into a form of ecstasy that led him to lose control of his body because of the beauty of the city. It is now called the Stendhal syndrome and is recognised by psychiatrists. I think deep down, we all feel a similar collective ecstasy. There's something we all recognise in beauty. The beauty of things connects the soul and the body in a moment of grace. It's a moment frozen in time. When you witness beauty, you're frozen in time. There's no more time; there's just beauty. It is a direct connection with heaven and God.”

Painterly impressionism

The photo works of Menin have an intense painterly and impressionist look, which is not surprising considering her background as a painter. As a child, she had already absorbed art and music, so it is hard to trace the influences in her work. “I've been fed with images for a long time. There are a lot of painters I like. For example, I adore The Mystical Lamb by Jan Van Eyck. I love the Flemish primitive painting, but I also love Gerhard Richter, or closer to home, the Belgian painter Thierry de Cordier. But loving a particular painter does not mean it will show in my work.”

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Neither visible in her art is the influence of music on her work, of which rock music is the least expected. “I used to listen to classical music often. I like different kinds of music, particularly rock music, like Nick Flanagan. When I was a teenager, I used to go to concerts often. I will soon be at The American Jesus concert. It’s a punk, new wave band from the 80s. Another singer, David Eugene Edwards, who talks about religion, influences my work. His music puts me in a certain state. While working, I listen to a lot of music because of the rhythm, tempo and emotions. It's a physical experience.”

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Millions of colours

Like a painter, Isabelle Menin, the artist, mixes images she photographs in a grand tableau in Photoshop, which is liberation for her. “After painting for at least fifteen years, I realised I was uncomfortable with the white canvas. But when I started with photography and Photoshop, I could start from a small piece of reality. Something that already existed that I could transform. Photoshop was a real liberation. It was an immense pleasure because it's fast, goes quickly, and you can change everything—turn it to pink or blue, or whichever colour you prefer. It is a challenge to choose the manifold possibilities. In reality, there are billions of colours and tints. And in Photoshop, you can make millions of colour variations, too.”

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Colour is essential in her work. That’s why choosing the colour palette is a painstaking process. “For example, when composing an image, if there is a lot of red, I add a little blue to make the image vibrate and resonate. If the blue is too raw, I search for a lighter, less cold blue. So, I vary the colours to create vibrations.”

When using colour, Menin takes painting as her big inspiration. “If you look long at a painting, for instance, a canvas from the XVIIIᵉ century by Nicolas Poussin, other great painters, or even the Impressionists, you will discover millions of uncountable and unnameable colours.”

Menin sees the impressionist painting of Monet as a great example of the treatment of colour. “At the end of his life, Monet created these beautiful landscapes of water lilies while almost blind. His paintings became almost abstract. Monet was perhaps one of the first great abstract painters at the end of his life. But even though I like impressionism a lot, it did not influence me so much.”

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About

Born in 1961, Isabelle Menin lives and works in Brussels. After graduating from the Graphic Research School (ERG) in Brussels, she has explored painting for 10 years while work- ing in graphic design and illustration. Nature has always been a recurring theme for the artist, particularly flora. After exhibiting several times in Belgium, Isabelle Menin decided to abandon painting to turn to digital photography. Taking pictures, scanning pieces of nature, the artist constantly plays with textures and colours, transforming them, mixing them, in order to give shape to a fictional nature, dense and flamboyant at the same time. Isabelle Menin has held exhibitions several times in Belgium, as well as in China at Hongqiao Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai, and at the Setup Contemporary Art Fair, Bologna.

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www.isabellemenin.com