Ria Verhaeghe has been collecting photos from newspapers and magazines for over 30 years. She classifies and catalogues them according to her own principles, creating a personal image database – called the 'Provisoria' – which contains approximately 35,000 photos. Under the header 'Verticals', Verhaeghe is exhibiting a series of panels, which are based on photos of dead people, in the collection of late-medieval art. These images take on a new meaning because she has changed the originally horizontal orientation of these images, to a portrait or vertical orientation.
The 'Vertikals' are reminiscent of paintings by the Flemish Primitives because she has affixed these images to a wooden panel and uses gold leaf. The reorientation, from horizontal to vertical, evokes a form of restoration or 'resurrection'. The internal dynamics of disappearance and appearance are fuelled by a continuous movement from the negative to the positive, from the passive to the active, from the aesthetical to the ethical.