SSALIVA, LANDSCAPES š
2021
160 Ć 240 mm
144 pages
ISBN 978-2-9575620-0-8
Soft book with jacket
100 copies
āFranƧois Boulanger is an audiovisual artist born in LiĆØge, Belgium in 1983. He started producing music by the end of the 90ās/early 2000ās and producing his visual work around 2010. Active under several monikers, he started his experimental project āSsalivaā in 2011 which today covers the entire spectrum of his works. Under this alias, he developed hypnotic soundscapes based on sparse rythms, lush tones and crystallised textures. A personal and romantic rendition of a life amidst nature and city pollution.
Read more
His work as Ssaliva also consists of documenting equally ethereal and removed places in pictures, two compulsive and lonely processes that have made him accumulate thousands of strange, escapist mental landscapes. His approach to visual arts is similar to music in terms of process too, stretching images and melodies, compressing bits of it, adding colors and samples until they become part of his own vision. Sometimes ghostly, sometimes sacred, an instantly recognizable form of melancholia.ā ā Munix
āLandscapesā is a first attempt to highlight Ssalivaās visual work. Through a selection of 100 images ā digital paintings based on original photographs or screenshots ā the book takes us on a scenic journey into the artistās mind. Recalling a wide variety of references from the fields of photography, painting, landscape architecture and even Internet art, Ssalivaās paintings bear witness to a wistful sensitivity to urban and rural exploration. Ssaliva has made his region a real playground. Walking through the āindeterminateā or empty spaces of LiĆØge and its surroundings, the artist showed his empathy for the interstices and other abandoned places charged with history. This is what he tried to transcribe in the modification of his digital paintings: A veil wrapping his landscapes in mysteries. With this book, Ssaliva sets a coherent backdrop to his musical production, further completing the puzzle of an instinctive body of work inscribed in the pure romantic tradition.
Read less