Trained in fine arts and also a radiologist, Christian Dugardeyn, aka DUGA, has pursued the same fascination for 30 years: exploring the human condition, our emotions and vulnerabilities, and the traces left behind by time. With Émotions brutes, his solo exhibition at The K Art Signatures, the Belgian artist unfolds a powerful, instinctive and neo-expressionist universe through three media: painting, sculpture and photography. Distorted faces, bodies, anatomical fragments, words, signs, colours and accidents come together in a visceral body of work in which DUGA embraces the freedom of gesture and emotion. In his Calendar series, each canvas captures the traces of a single day: memories, events, medical images, cultural references, annotations… The painting becomes a kind of “emotional scan” of time. In Baxter, faces and silhouettes emerge from simple pieces of cardboard, as fragile and anonymous as the people they represent. Japan is the exhibition’s other major thread. DUGA presents a selection of photographs taken during his travels through the archipelago, in dialogue with his contemporary Kokeshi. Reinterpreted in materials including bronze, acrylic, ink and lacquer, these traditional Japanese dolls enter the artist’s colourful and graphic universe. In his photographs, DUGA looks at Japan; in his Kokeshi, he allows Japan to enter his own universe. Between art and medicine, Belgium and Japan, tradition and contemporary creation, Émotions brutes ultimately explores the same fundamental question: the human condition, the passing of time and the traces we attempt to preserve.
DUGA – Raw Emotions
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