Fantastic settings

When René Magritte painted The Son of Man in 1964, he said of it: “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us." 

The painting consists of a man in a bowler hat and overcoat standing before a low wall, beyond which is the horizon of sea meeting a cloudy sky, but his face is largely obscured by a floating green apple. We know his face is there, we can see his eyes peek out over the top of the apple, but what does he look like? And more importantly, do we really need to know? An interest then in what the visible does not show us can be therefore portrayed by artists presenting their work within a fantastical or conceptual setting. In Artsper's selection of fantastic settings, Javier Rey explores the possibilities of sculpture and physical structures. Ben Goossens (BEL), on the other hand, has been influenced by Surrealism, dubbed the Dali or Magritte of photography as he combines intense sensitivity with dreams. Through timeless creations, reason and space, BEL tries to portray the essence of fantasies – what we can see and indeed an interpretation of what is hidden…