Pieter Ombregt, photography. Performance photographer Pieter Ombregt clad himself in an orange prison jumpsuit and then set out into the stark world of urban concrete and desert sand, placing himself alone and at a distance in forbidding environments to pose for his color scenario shots. A conceptual artist, Ombregt says that he wants us to see “the person in the orange suit”—these images are not self-portraits, but cultural icons—as “an orange flare, in a disconnected world crying out for help.” Ombregt’s cri-de-coeur is a silent scream, buried under the absolute impassivity that he shows standing straightly erect on an empty loading dock, in a doorway on a vacant street, or in a parched brown wasteland, always appearing as though he had been stuck there and did not belong to the scene. Is an apathetic front putting a lid on the scream, or is Ombregt beyond crying? (Michael Weinstein) Through February 3 at City Gallery. https://art.newcity.com/2007/11/29/review-pieter-ombregt/
Pieter Ombregt Scholarship
Pieter Ombregt was a member of xXx Racing-Athletico for two seasons from 2006-2007. He was born in 1980 in Kanegem (Tielt), Belgium and came to Chicago in 2003 to study photography at Columbia College. He was a gifted photographer, an accomplished cyclist and a dear friend to the Chicago cycling community. Pieter died on September 11, 2007, from injuries he sustained in a bicycle racing accident.
The Pieter Ombregt Scholarship Fund was established in 2007 by his aunt, Anne-Marie Ombregt, to support advanced undergraduate photography students at Columbia College.
