David de Beyter

The Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France is pleased to present Build and Destroy, the third part of David De Beyter’s Big Bangers exhibition series.

The first stage of this project, Just a good crash, was presented at BBB Centre d’Art in spring 2015; the second, Nothing else matters, gave rise to an exhibition at the Centre d’Art image/imatge in spring 2016. 

David De Beyter is a young artist whose research, solidly grounded in the history of art, focuses on landscapes. He studies and records places that are often isolated and abandoned, finding traces of utopian architectural constructions that were ‘futuristic’ in their time, but which have now become part of history.

His approach, viewpoints and the high technical precision of his photos confer an enigmatic and fantastic character upon these real-life locations.

With ‘Big Bangers’, David De Beyter adds a more anthropological approach to his usual topological one in an exhibition for which he has broadened the scope of his expression to encompass film, installations and sculpture, in addition to photography.

Films lie at the very heart of this exhibition that focuses on ‘big bangers’, i.e. a sport, derived from autocross that is very popular in the North of France. It consists in violently crashing vehicles to create a ‘good crash’, whose only purpose and motivation lies in the spectacle of destruction and the contemplation of what remains afterwards: the wreck, or according to the term favoured by fans in this community, an ‘auto-sculpture’.

David De Beyter was born in Roubaix in 1985. He lives and works in Tourcoing.

The exhibition was produced in partnership with BBB Centre d’Art (Toulouse) and the Centre d’Art image/imatge (Orthez).

Big Bangers has received the support of the Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques and the Région Nord-Pas-de-Calais.