Flatland Gallery

The renown of Dutch artist Ruud van Empel (Breda, 1958) has spread across the globe. His photographic images, digital collages made out from fragments of hundreds of his own photographs, have a sense of permanence and are very inspiring. His subjects seem to have time to stand and stare: time to evaluate, to be part of nature, to watch their dreams. There is an inherent beauty, tranquility, nature and pureness. The softness of his tone, though, in no way diminishes the sharpness of his work. There is a sort of attendant pressure: an invisible complication: something that looms over these idyllic scenes. 

In 2012 Van Empel added a new chapter to his oeuvre: ‘Sunday’. In a way he composed these “French gardens” with their characteristic symmetrical lines as an accurate background for his subjects, boys and girls, to wander in. With ‘Sunday # 9’ Van Empel uses a horizontal line now separating the earth and the sky, establishing a different perspective with the emphasis on the face, as if he decided to change his angExhibited internationally with great success in the past few years, his first retrospective with over 80 works opened in 2011 in the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue and is travelling abroad to the MoPA-Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego in 2012 and to the photography museum Fotografiska, Stockholm, Sweden and the Fotomuseum Antwerpen (FoMu), in Belgium in 2013.