Emoplux

The starting point for “dystopian circles/fragments all along …” was a journey leading from Brussels, the political epicentre of Europe, to the far-flung shores of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost island in the Mediterranean Sea which has gained notoriety as a key point of entry for refugees and illegal immigrants aboard makeshift boats.
While the initial goal of this trip was to address the refugee issue, along the way Armand Quetsch shifted his gaze to the European landscape and the extent to which it was revealing of the tensions and malaise of his time.
His zig-zag itinerary took him to Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, to Athens in Greece and then on to Albania and around the Balkans region in search of emblematic places, zones of conflict, monuments, clues, symbols and settings. History and the European dimension are omnipresent in how the territory and the memory of the landscape have been shaped.
The “dystopian circles/fragments all along… “ exhibition is an open narrative conceived as a dynamic and engaging event. By way of a rich visual and formal repertoire it offers a multi-layered immersive experience made up of a play of correspondences and confrontations: a puzzle in which each image calls upon the viewer to recreate a whole from out of their own understanding, imagination and experience.
Armand Quetsch invites us to be fellow travellers in his contemplative odyssey. Without any short-cuts and against a backdrop of a mapping of Europe that is highly contemporary, he strives to challenge the photographic medium and explore the limits of representation while pursuing his own personal quest to apprehend the world.