Publicaties

Jacques Louis Nyst

1973-1979

Book
Materials:

Collection: Collectie Guy Jungblut - Andrée Blavier.

The wiped-away road
Attempt at a self-portrait

I am not a writer, and yet I write.
I am not a photographer, and yet I take photographs.
I am not a filmmaker, and yet I make films.
I am not a TV-maker and yet I make videos.
I am not a theatre actor and yet I imagine a fictional character.
I am not a historian and yet I do tell stories about History.
Am I nothing then? Maybe nothing.
But this nothing is scattered through the light, the words, swallows in the imagination, comes out of a mouse hole and smiles at life, it's the poetry without which, precisely, nothing would reach the essence.
Without this nothing, I would be as grey as the mouse.
When the autumn colours surprise me, the seasons change me, I discover in the blackest moments, on the border of the dark, a blue gate that opens to eternity, a space of absolute tranquillity where the artist can put his easel.
In that nothing, I really feel good.
The scenario is the path that leads me to this place.
Actually, I'm telling you stories because, and that has been said a thousand times before, to get at this point where the view is so beautiful, the road is wiped away.

Jacques Louis Nyst, January 1991
Sint-Lucasgalerij, March 1991


Nous ne sommes pas des cybernautes (We Are No Cybernauts, 1973) is a finely edited experiment that can be called a meta-book. The book, described by the artist on the title page as Livre de lecture contains ten 'lectures' (readings) and ends with a number of 'exercises de lecture' (reading exercises). It problematises our observing and interpreting, and does so by confronting various types of images with others and by putting them into dialogue. Motifs from photos get a graphical echo and vice versa. Photographic images interact with lay-out and book format. Here, the book acts as an awareness-raising looking exercise, yet not without poetry or mystery.

Johan Pas, Kunstenaarsboeken (artists' books) uit Nederland en België deel 1: de jaren '70 en '80. Ekeren-Antwerp, June 2009.


Nous ne sommes pas des cybernautes, 1973, Yellow Now / André De Rache

Pour un visiteur futur, 1975, Yellow Now

L'Objet, 1976, Yellow Now

L'ombrelle en papier et le principe de non-réalité, 1976, Yellow Now

L'éclipse sandwich, 1979, Musée Saint-Georges / Yellow Now

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