Philippe Vandenberg, etching for Exil de Peintre, Ergo Pers, 2003
[printer's proof with by Henrie Hemelsoet]

 

Exil de peintre, an artists' book with 64 etchings and a text by Flemish artist Philippe Vandenberg. For a year, Philippe Vandenberg worked on this series of etchings in the studio of master printer Henrie Hemelsoet. The contact with the graphic technique gave a new direction to Vandenberg's work. Where the artist uses destruction as a method in his painting, also in etching the 'failure' is often an opening to a new visual language. In the extended biting of the etching h-ground, a new line emerges. The etching technique, the artist's book as a laboratory.
Etching 34 consists of the combination of two etching plates, the first a vernis mou or soft ground etching, the second an open bite etching with spit bite aquatint, printed in two variations.
Exil de peintre was a creation of Philipe Vandenberg, Henri Hemelsoet and Rein Ergo and was published in a limited edition of 33 copies.