An invasive alien is spreading rapidly and threatening our native species, biodiversity, and infrastructure. What can we do and how should we react? What is its impact? Can we return to a landscape free of these exotics or should we challenge our protectionist attitude? What role can we play? Photographer Kristof Vrancken and graphic designer Niek Kosten investigate and dissect the position of the plant species Japanese knotweed in their environment. Not in my backyard! showcases a wide array of experimental work that explores various visual and imaginative strategies to relate to the issue… Read More

This week I had the pleasure of finally visiting Kristof Vrancken‘s exhibition at Z33 in Hasselt. The exhibition really wowed me – both in the intelligent use of the new extension of Z33 that has a truly international ambition, but also in the wonderful and rich overview of Vrancken’s work. Inspired by Tarkovsky’s film Stalker Vrancken uses the roles of artist, scientist and guide to explore the consequences of the Anthropocene through photography and installations. Find a series of photos of the exhibition by Boumediene Belbachir / Z33 and Kristof Vrancken and the… Read More

Z33 in Hasselt presents the first major retrospective of Kristof Vrancken in which ecology, activism and photography meet each other. The portrait of Vrancken in a lab coat, studying an unknown specimen in a post-industrial landscape sums it all up. There’s the part of the mad professor that has led him to drink, not without danger, his selfmade concoctions made out of plants growing on industrial wastelands. But there’s above all this willingness to enter into an intense relationship with that landscape for which he advocates a more sustainable relationship with nature…. Read More

Very happy to announce that Kristof Vrancken has been shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards in the category ‘Environment’ with his series Transit. Transit depicts the evolution and history of the town of Genk in Belgium, using the 19th-century anthotype process in new forms. It consists of nine photographic prints made with an organic and drinkable emulsion created from plants harvested from the locations seen in the pictures. As a consequence, an interesting relationship between the physical landscape and its photographic representation emerges. This method not only allows me to approach… Read More

The work of Kristof Vrancken can currently be seen in two exhibitions. The Waiting Room is this year’s title of the group exhibition of Vonk Ateliers at C-mine, Genk that was curated by Koen Leemans. Vrancken is showing the work that he made last summer with Atelier Luma in Arles in collaboration with ENSP (Ecole Superieure de Photographie Arles) and which was earlier shown in Korea. In collaboration with the Algae Lab of Atelier Luma Vrancken developed a way to use the colour pigments of local algae to make photographic prints, and to… Read More

The work that Kristof Vrancken produced last year during a residency at the Emile van Doren Museum in Genk (B) will be shown in the group show ‘Remembering Landscape’ at The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest curated by Sandra Demetrescu, Eva Schmidt, Kai Vöckler. Other participants are Bogdan Bordeianu, Lucian Bran, Marianna Christofides, Chloe Dewe Mathews, Lukas Einsele, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán, Cyprien Gaillard, Dani Ghercă, Anne Heinlein & Göran Gnaudschun, Nicu Ilfoveanu, Markus Karstieß, Thomas Kellner, Jan Kempenaers, Aglaia Konrad, Susanne Kriemann, Armin Linke, Ciprian Mureșan, Andreas Mühe, Multiplicity, Alexandra… Read More

Kristof Vrancken goes East. Next week his work and the Algaetype workshop (Atelier Luma and ENSP) will be presented in Seoul during the exhibition “Nature Created By Design“. A few days later his mijnKOOL-project and documentary (directed by Diren Agbaba) will be shown in Xiamen (China) together with work of De Onkruidenier, Jessica Segall, Rain Wu, Orla Barry and many others within the framework of the Food Art Film Festival on Tour. For more information see the posters above.