Category Archives: Invited Artist

Harold Lechein

Harold Lechien

Mark Brand
06.01 – 05.02.22

Mark Brand is a hybrid body of work associating an artistic production with a promotion by Harold Lechien

exploiting the language of branding, then used as artistic material. The heart of the installa- tion is a video bringing together the artworks and a series of messages, logos and derived

objects used in a narrative process that makes the brand oscillate between artistic discourse and a commercial product. It reveals an emotional relationship to these products, to their equivocal status in our lives, and to their distribution.

Works

Charlotte Van Geert

Charlot Van Geert

Good Luck
29.01 – 05.03.22

What you see is not what you get Charlot Van Geert turns things upside down, figuratively speaking. She shakes up our unshakeable faith in objects and matter. By stripping objects of their seemingly obvious meaning, she creates new contexts, humorous situations and critical reflections on the objects and art with which we surround ourselves.

As a sculptor, she deals subversively with the materials traditionally given to her. In doing so, she not only challenges their reality, but also her own role as an artist. From working with less 'high' materials such as cardboard, polystyrene foam or PU foam, to the connection between the 'correct' material and the 'appropriate' look (bronze water levels, polystyrene foam lamps): Van Geert likes to put us on the wrong track.

She plays a game with design and the functions of objects: is it a utilitarian object or is it art? If a candlestick is art, can you burn a candle in it? As soon as that question arises, it also deals with the sacredness of art: does something still have artistic value when it can be manipulated, can get dirty, can fall down? There is no need to fear fingerprints: those of the artist are often present, also in bronze reliefs, in which the traces of the kneaded wax model are still clearly visible. It is as if Van Geert is deliberately wiping her proverbial feet of the high status of art - also literally, with her bronze doormat or six-pack can holder, and by elevating other everyday objects to artistic heights. By doing so, she also takes them out of their comfort zone: her idiosyncratic techniques, for example, destroy the apparent, proud inviolability of bronze.

Works

Justine Grillet

Justine Grillet

Puppet Factory
17.03 – 16.04.22

Throughout my practice I’ve mostly been working around three topics: Theatre, Structure & Performance, explains my idea of working with different scenes from a play. To create a stage where figures can perform and dance. For this, I use theories from fictional stories that I consider as truth and applies them in my work. By playing with a non-physical world, I feel like I can question the role of a performer and the meaning of his performance. This means that creatures living in this particular world can be drawn, written down, or become a piece of sound. These non-physical creatures or monsters suggest figurative work. They do not exist in the real world but in words, memories, and stories, they are present. After this process some of them become physical beings and they’re growing into characters with a personality.

The relationship between sound and object. This has been one of my main concerns in the last years. They can be compared to an archaeological sound archive. I record all sorts of sounds in my atelier, from ceramic rattles to banging metal. My way of working with sound is an experimental and spontaneous process. I combine the sound of handcrafted objects with the sound of electronic devices such as a synthesizer and this by implementing the device in a sculpture. It’s essential for me to see how the elements work together and how they function as an arrangement.

‘In ‘The Book of Imaginary Beings’, Borges comments on all kinds of mythical creatures in a sly and humorous way. It is full of abstruse references and lots of fun. Something I want to keep in mind during my process. These stories can lead me to create my own creatures. According to this, drawings are and will remain an important element in my play. First of all, they are a way of thinking and processing. In addition to that, they can also be used as a tool to create a story, context or a landscape.

Works

Xavier Duffaut

Xavier Duffaut

Fourt
18.11 - 18.12.21​

A place where poetic encounters emerge through processes of infiltration and appropriation, creating a cosmos of fraud and aesthetic conviction. Conceived as a soft-chateau, the exhibition is crowded with opulent expressions of hygiene, mass manufacturing and enchantment. Duffaut’s work activates the carefree qualities of market coercion. It shapes and sculpts wasted perfections up until a point where constellations of clean bold colors emerge.

For his first solo exhibition, Xavier Duffaut brings into focus the elegantly banal that intrigues him so. The works intend to produce a collective atmosphere of non-difference, of non-heterotopia. They allow us to fall implicit, to fall into a trope, into a corporate business meeting, a collective therapy session for people with trust issues.

FOURT asks serious questions about the nature of ‘realness’. Its impossibility and absolute possibility. Liveliness beyond the boundaries of realness. Forms catapult through the space creating new levels of dysphoric sensation and general confusion. A sanitary extravaganza, an arena of branded monstrosities. It wonders what might have happened in the factories or in the mechanical fur or in Julia's bathroom?

This show has one mission. To do it well. And then, to head to the compost or the gutter.

Works

Benjamin Volckaerts

Benjamin Volckaerts

“Unmatched”

In his sculptures, Benjamin likes to display abstract and figurative forms. To arrive at these specific forms, he starts with his collected collages and drawings. The forms he takes out of them, he cast in plaster, acrylic one or cement. After this process, Benjamin continues working on the details with ceramics.

These ceramic parts are not fixed to the sculptures but are interchangeable so that the sculptures can be viewed as a kind of 3D collage. The dressing and undressing of the warriors using the separate ceramic parts can only be done smoothly if he has carefully considered all kinds of technical specifications in the choice of his materials.

Benjamin sees his work as a process of sculpturing that's never finished and is always in motion. There is always room to integrate new elements into his works. By working in the form of collages in both 2D and 3D, different style periods are used interchangeably; the Baroque, Mayan culture, Romanesque style, as well as Rococo combined with abstract modern forms.

Ultimately, the sculptures, collages and drawings will confront each other and then it will be decided whether the parts will be exhibited autonomously or as a whole installation

Stijn Stevens

Stijn Stevens

16.10 - 13.11.21​

"How does the combination of light, space and time relate to the static image?" Light is one of the main conditions of a painting, but at the same time it is one of the most common elements in our daily life. We surround ourselves by (artificial) light with the use of smartphones, laptops or lamps in the evening, when the natural light disappears behind the horizon. Our relationship to light therefore determines how we experience time, just like space or its absence. The distorted reflexivity in my work abstracts the real world, and so the world becomes part of the work. This means that the work is in a constant flux of movement throughout the day, giving meaning to the moment when the spectator reads the work. In this way, the element of time creeps into the work. But time and space are inherently linked to each other. That's why we have "Spacetime"

Works