[INTERVIEW] Belgian artist's whimsical play with shadows captures hearts of millions

"Concerto for Piano Peeler" by Vincent Bal / Courtesy of the artist, Dcommunication

Vincent Bal's 'The Art of Shadow' opens as his first solo exhibition

By Park Han-sol

Belgian illustrator and moviemaker Vincent Bal / Courtesy of the artist

For Belgian visual artist and filmmaker Vincent Bal, the primary creative ingredient for his whimsical doodles is the shadow itself.

To be more precise, his inventive craft is all about capturing the quirky potential of shadows cast by immediately recognizable, everyday objects and combining them with his own minimal ink sketches.

Bal's reimagined shadow imagery transforms a zucchini slicer into a tuneful piano concerto, a pair of scissors into a cowboy engaged in a shootout and an emerald cocktail glass into a spotlight shining on a fleeing convict. In one image, he even puts a spin on a bundle of at-home COVID-19 antigen test kits, turning their silhouette into a wide-eyed individual bracing for an infamous nasal swab.

"Sometimes, it's just a glass, but it also becomes the sea. Or you see that it's a corkscrew, but it also becomes a guy sniffing wine ― the power of simplicity," the artist said during an interview with The Korea Times last month in Seoul.

"I'm always looking for things that can make a shadow look very specific ― with a slight, strange bump there or a strange hole inside, etc."

"Escape from Alcaglass" by Vincent Bal / Courtesy of the artist, Dcommunication

"Sandblasted Glass" by Vincent Bal / Courtesy of the artist, Dcommunication

"The Art of Shadow," currently held at Museum 209 in Songpa District, is the 51-year-old's first-ever solo exhibition, following a string of other smaller group shows in New York, London, Paris and Taiwan.

It was one day in May 2016 that Bal, who was busy working on a film script at the time, stumbled upon a curious-looking shadow cast by his tea cup with a funny ear he purchased in Vietnam. "It looked a bit like a tiny elephant," he recalled.

Rather than concentrating on the task at hand, he decided to indulge in a brief moment of procrastination as he lifted his pen to fill in what was missing in the shadowy elephant ― round eyes, floppy ears, sturdy legs and a wiggly tail.

He then took a picture of his witty feat and shared it on social media. It was a pleasant surprise to see positive comments flood in from his friends and followers to what was essentially a one-time recreation. "So I set myself a sort of a challenge: to make one shadow image every day and see if I can reach 100," he said.

That number has reached well over 1,000 six years later, and even now, his creative juices seem to keep flowing.

And that's the origin story for the artist's ongoing "Shadowology" series ― a term he coined to give his craft a more "scientific" feel ― that has since amassed over 900,000 followers on Instagram.

"Slicing off a Split Second" by Vincent Bal / Courtesy of the artist, Dcommunication

Shadowology has satisfied a part of his pent-up creative desire that had long gone unfulfilled while working solely as a filmmaker, according to Bal.

The fact that movies are collaborative projects requiring time, budget and inevitably, a number of administrative gatekeepers, frequently ends up "watering down" the originally conceived idea.

But with shadow works, "it's just me, a paper, a pen and a lamp," he said. "There's a direct line between my brain and my hand. The next stop is the audience."

It's a field that he has absolutely free rein, filled with chance encounters with everyday objects hidden in plain sight inside his drawers, on the shelves of thrift shops and even on highway shoulders. Sometimes, those meetings birth a doodle in less than 10 minutes ― as in "Flower Power" depicting a hippie with the shadow of a dandelion ― and other times, they take hours with no end in sight.

"When you start making something with a completely open mind, everything that you find is a treasure. Now, I understand Picasso a little better when he said 'I do not seek. I find,'" he said with a chuckle.

"The Shape of Water" by Vincent Bal / Courtesy of the artist, Dcommunication

While social media has been his primary playground to showcase his shadow works with tongue-in-cheek titles for the last six years, the brick-and-mortar exhibition in Seoul offers a new chance for the artist to approach his audience, mainly through some 100 enlarged "pop art-like" prints that can be collectively enjoyed beyond smartphone screens.

Also sprinkled throughout the gallery are 15 big and small physical installations that bring his 2D prints to life by casting real shadows. Bal's short film, "Sea Shadow," a mixture between live action and animation, provides viewers a peek into his other creative identity as a filmmaker.

A special bonus for Korean fans awaits toward the end of the illustrator's Seoul show as well.

"Instant Temple" by Vincent Bal / Courtesy of the artist, Dcommunication

Alongside the shadow of a green soju bottle that has birthed a vista of a moonlit seaside, the shadow of a stack of spicy Buldak Ramen packets has been reimagined as a majestic Buddhist temple in springtime.

The artist expects to see a little more of Korea in his future works following his first trip to the country last month ― whether through a peculiar shadow cast by an object that was gifted to him by his fans or the visual recreation of Seoul's mellow autumnal cityscape.

"One night, I was walking here in the city; with the rain falling down and all the neon lights, it looked like a fairytale. It was fantastic. That, one day, will come up in my picture one way or another, I'm sure," Bal said.

"The Art of Shadow" runs through April 23, 2023, at Museum 209.