Rana Van Pellecom

Her first series, exhibited at Galerie Sinople, bears unmistakable witness, with powerful delicacy, to this constant search for silence in a universe that is antagonistic to it: in this case, the movement of a cargo ship. 

The printed image recreates changing atmospheres, all of which evoke the artist’s pictorial heritage. The depth of blacks rubs shoulders with the piercing light and muted tones characteristic of the Flemish Primitives.

« Imagine being in a world of water, deserted from the mainland. Where detachment controls your actions and being isolated becomes a new state of mind. When I found myself on the Primula, these feelings transformed into images. The emotions that could be experienced after losing oneself are represented by different views of land and sea. As an outsider, I caught a glimpse of the life within these massive walls of steel. All connections got lost between head & body and vessel & mainland. 

Yet the Primula kept sailing as a world on its own. Aside from the different faces of the ocean, the rising and the setting of the sun and the changing of the people onboard, the ship kept on going. 

In 2019, I joined the crew of the vessel Primula onboard for 3 trips consisting of 4 days, 10 days & 7 days. We sailed loaded with containers from Ghent, Belgium to Gothenburg, Sweden and vice versa with an occasional stop in Norway. The outcome of this project was not how I imagined it to be and that is part of the beauty. I had to let go in order to capture these images. The solitude of being at sea reinforced the serenity I was trying to find. »