Art au Centre is an art project with the aim of revitalizing the city center of Liège.

For the fourth edition of Art au Centre, from Februrary 4 to April 30, 32 artists from Liège, Belgium and abroad present their works in 27 windows of empty stores. Painting, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, video… All current art forms are presented.

The exhibition map and the explanatory texts are available in fench and english on the website www.artaucentre.be.

Art au Centre is an initiative of Mouvements Sans Titre and Liège Gestion Centre-Ville. FOURRURE ACÉRÉE 1 Élodie Antoine, Virton (BE), 1978 Curator : Marjorie Ranieri

Visual artist Élodie Antoine lives and works in Brussels. Her work makes use of flexible textile materials such as felt, fabric, thread, lace, wallpaper but also more rigid materials such as glass recently. The combination of these different elements gives rise to surprising hybrid sculptures with multiple excrescences.

The artist also enjoys revisiting objects of the everyday life (chair, frame, sink, armchair, etc.) by modifying their morphology to explore other potentialities. This revisit enables her to build a uni- verse that is both uncommon and natural, surprising and worrying at the frontier between mineral, animal and vegetal kingdoms.

Color is also a key element of her compositions. It is never left to chance and takes on a very strong connotation.

For the fifth edition of Art au Centre, Élodie Antoine displays hybrid sculptures that combine materials that are contradictory at first sight: cut, prickly, sharp glass and the softness of the white syn- thetic fur and the felt. These contrasted compositions that can be likened to sea anemones, floral bouquets or fragile hedgehogs erecting their spikes as a warning, arouse simultaneously attrac- tion and repulsion. These sparkling glass sculptures are both strange and fascinating.

Marjorie Ranieri

« This installation is the idea of an expanding sculpture that develops itself, whether in a vegetal, organic or marine form. I am interested in the concept of proliferation. The artwork can transform and evolve. I also love the contrast between the two materials. One really wants to touch but suspects that it is dan- gerous. Light is important, glass is a very changing material. Depending on the luminosity, these items can be very different throughout the day. »

Élodie Antoine

4 2 IKARIA WARIOOTIA Esther Babulik, Montpellier (FR), 1993

The rotting carcass is my starting point. It refers to a term of decomposing and thus transforming body, soft body becoming hard, animal or human body, body source of life but dead. It is a matter of describing a movement towards a metamorphosis. The body is not body anymore and became a faceless pile, a thing that we can’t qualify, the flesh gets mixed up with the hair. Thanks to the wax, it seems to breathe. Its unrecognizable shape contrasts with its living aspect, as if to reverse the process, sometimes birth, sometimes death, the reading can be done both ways. The birth, namely the creation, the generation, would respond com-

Artist winner of the call for project plementarily to the decomposition. These two movements would respond to each other symmetrically.

The body is a living matter that is going to be recycled, redis- tributed. So, if we consider each entity with its environment, considering it as being part of a whole, we could thus imagine that any life is made of a single matter that changes its appea- rance freely like a wax that we would melt endlessly.

I like the idea that the body is not cultural nor natural, the idea that it becomes both and that from now on our relationship with nature comes down to forced and repressed drives. I try to won- der about these states of limit, these zones where the boundaries seem to disappear. Ambivalences converge and a transformation will originate from that.

This sculpture is inspired by the Ikaria wariootia, a vermiform ani- mal that seems to be the oldest example of bilateria, the body shape shared by the vast majority of animals since then. It is perhaps the ancestor of the animal kingdom, including humans.

Esther Babulik

Notes / adresses :

5 LES ENTREMETTEURS 3 Institut belge de design graphique Curator : Arthur Cordier

The Institut of Art and Design is an independent organization that works as a knowledge center and a platform of presentation for graphic design in Belgium. The Institut fills the gap left by the histo- rical underestimation of graphic design.

The window displays a speculative view of the cloakroom and a library of the Institut. This exhibition questions the limits between art and graphic design that became hard to define. Rather than comparing them as two different disciplines, the Institut of Art and Design explores their similarities focusing on what unites them. It is no secret that these two disciplines come from the same source. One can’t survive without its creativity, the other can’t survive wit- hout its communication. The ambiguous position of the designer is due to his pivotal position, meeting point of several disciplines.

The different « entremetteurs » displayed in the window combine both practices by playing with the norms and the conventions of each of them. The entremetteurs often wear several hats: graphic designer, artist, textile designer, associate, entrepreneur, poet and much more. The different artworks, items and clothes displayed in a shop window, as part of an art exhibition, seem to have found their place. While combining different temporalities with older and very recent artworks, another speech is made possible by the asso- ciation of graphic design with artistic artworks. The window gives the impression to enter into another interior where the content and its place enable us to imagine a new framework for both the history of art and the history of graphic design in Belgium.

Notes / adresses :

6 4 SOLICITUD Claire et Morgan, Rennes (FR) Morgan Azaroff, Chateaubriant (FR), 1993 • Claire Guetta, Beauvais (FR), 1993

Solicitud is a project that began in 2019. It is presented as a TV series that presents, like the télénovelas, the relationships and tensions that may exist between artists and other actors in the art world.

Tired of failing to succeed and receiving only negative responses to calls for applications for exhibitions or artistic residencies, the duo Claire et Morgan wanted to play down their lives by making the story even more dramatic. And nothing more dramatic than the telenovela. The series builds on elements experienced in their life as an artist. They strive to respect real facts, even if it means quoting sen- Artist duo winner of the call for project tences from art center directors or letters of rejection as they are. The title Solicitud comes from the translation of the word « appli- cation » in Spanish, closely linked to the administrative world. It is also a play on words with « solicit » and « solitude ». The tone remains funny, but recalls the great precariousness of actors in the world of contemporary art. Between multiple jobs, precarious tenure, jealousy, feeling of failure, lack of consi- deration... the lives of young artists have all the keys to a good dramatic series over several seasons.

There are now five episodes, including one special and one musi- cal. On the occasion of Art au Centre, Solicitud takes the form of an installation reminiscent of dioramas. The scenes freeze, like a window on the real life of the artists. The administrative signature of Claire et Morgan becomes an arch inspired by Gallo-Roman architecture, a vestige as solid as rock.

Claire et Morgan

7 SOUS L’ARC-EN-CIEL 5 Martin Coiffier, Paris (FR), 1973 Curator : Thomas Ghaye, La peau de l’ours

About Sous l’arc-en-ciel : Trees offer oxygen and life. Their roots plunge into a soil that our ancestors treaded centuries before us. Their branches soar towards the universe and yield to the hazards of the wind, the thunderstorms, the disasters… They are the pillars of our exis- tence. Being at the heart of the forest is living in the center of the world, the history of humanity. It means plunging deep into the human that I am and reaching thoughts that are buried so deeply that there is no word to describe them. My forests are loud voices, explosions of joy, anger and energy created by the opposition between my dreams and an existence inexorably deep-rooted into reality. I associate a list of words with these paintings that I created during this very particular year. These words came to my mind during the first lockdown and reflect the different states of mind that followed one another until the new beginning that we were expecting…

About Martin : Martin Coiffier worked for many years in the cinema business in Spain and Central America. The landscapes that he discovered during the location scouting or the shooting and his own pro- duction works became decisive in his approach of photography that remains his main artistic tool and whose use is more about pictorial composition than traditional photography. The game between the realism provoked by the photographic technique and the fictional nature of the recomposition of ele- ments that are proper to cinema or painting is at the center of his approach. It is a reflection on the way we perceive and then transcribe the reality that surrounds or inhabits us through these two artistic techniques.

Notes / adresses :

8 6 ALLEGRAPARK Tony Coopman, Courtrai (BE), 1985 Lasse Russe, Dunkerque (FR), 1982 Curator : Bertrand Léonard

AP is a playground. AP is a forest. The rules are simple: Entertainment as a new reality. Violence and death are assimilated through the overload of action movies, video games and theme parks. The coffin is the starting point, it is both an arcade cabinet and a roller coaster cart. The profusion of wooden weapons is the reflection of the multitude of offers proposed by the entertainment society. The windows are the screens that diffuse these epileptic images. AP exploits the ambivalence and the fascination of objects whose function is connected to death. They lose their sacred and moral nature to turn into simple wooden toys. AP is a dogma based on the virtuality of the existence. Are we still in the game ?

Tony Coopman examines raw materials and assembles them meticulously. As an engineer of the impossible, he transforms them into poetic machines, usually weapons, endowed with their own mechanism and life. He works at the Kunstwerkplaats De Zandberg. Lasse Russe is an illustrator and a painter. The segmented stroke of his drawings stirs his colorful compositions that are inhabited by his psychedelic and organic motifs. These ornaments dialogue with the destructured illustrations to lead us into a singular graphic narration.

The coffin in the installation benefited from a production and dif- fusion aid granted by the association Fructôse Dunkerque.

Bertrand Léonard

9 SLICE OF LIFE 7 Marlies De Clerck, Heist (BE), 1988 Curator : Marine Candova, Cdlt+

This painting is part of the collection Slice of Life made of seven oversized oil paintings representing baskets of fruits. Each bas- ket is embellished with a specific gaudy and festive ribbon. It is obviously a gift: a gift to daily life or to a person to whom one should give a bit of life. The dark background prevents any per- ception of space. Only the reflection of light on the fruits gives us a feeling of depth and temporality. The theme looks familiar. The genre of still life, as part of a long tradition, sends us back to our transient nature, to our unnatural liking for overabundance and sermonizes us compulsively to remind us that the spiritual dimension is as essential as the material side and that every- thing is doomed to die.

Historically and despite its popularity, still life ranks last in the artistic recognition as a pictorial subject.

« Still life is the infantryman in the army of artists »

Slice of Life / Tranche de vie : little ordinary details of daily life that come very close to absurdity, in a duality between comi- cal and dramatic events. A direct connection to a Belgian sense of humor and irony. Evidences and traditions taken out of their context and revived. Isolated and reinterpreted everyday life. Pic- torial art as a mirror of our existence. Slice of Life / Tranche de vie is not only a research on the change of status of the theme but it is also a personal analysis of the pictorial tradition itself.

« Life is short, art is lengthy, painting will survive »

Marine Candova

Notes / adresses :

10 8 ROSE ZÉRO SYSTEMATIQUE Marcel Devillers, Paris (FR), 1991 Curator : Sophie Delhasse

Marcel Devillers’ artistic practice gets experienced with pace and cadence. He oscillates between paintings, mate- rials and installation that he combines with readings and performances. A pace, the pace of the eye first. An eye that gets hypnotized by the reading of his mural poems, installed directly in the display window. The gesture of the painter reci- procally contaminates the gesture of the author. A move, the move of the retina that follows in a long travelling the closed line of the poem, a convolution that reminds us of the cogs of a machine or a transmission belt. A transfer takes place, the reading wants to appear pictorial, and the power of lan- guage blossoms in a flow of feelings, shapes and images.

The look moves and stops on a painting-object placed on the ground. Surrounded by light, it replaces successively a dot, a hearth, an axis or an exclamation. These podiums remind us of the universe of the scene or the cinema and their dres- sing rooms, of a past or future potentiality. Activated by the artist during performative readings, these closed spaces become the support of a voice that incarnates itself in the carnal pace of the declamation. The body sets the tempo, the implied tempo of the actor or the choreographer who lives in these small scenic islands. The title of the proposal refers to another notion of repetitive dissemination, as Rose Zéro has already been used by the artist in his publications. A serial aspect of production that enables Marcel Devillers’ work to spread out like a constellation of reflections on art and perception. It convokes as much a questioning of the artistic work and its materiality as the writing and its ora- lity, playing with the porosity of aesthetics, materials and practices. It leads to a muffled beat fed by the excitement of the sparkling world of performing arts as by the nostalgic silence of the bodies and their incarnation. It also leads to a nomad deconstruction of the stability of our visual space.

Sophie Delhasse

11 FIRN - MAGNIFIED 9 Dina Dressen, Aken (DE), 1994

Dina Dressen is a visual artist based in Maastricht, working between drawing, print, and installation. Using simple means: Indian ink, water, paper, and canvas, Dressen creates her com- plex visual universe. She tends to deploy techniques which mimic chemical and geological processes, such as absorption, sedimentation, and surface runoff. They resound in the titles and account for the natural textures of her works : the coarseness of the stone, the grittiness of sand, the smoothness of water.

In her early practice, Dressen was exploring analogue photogra-

phy, and its influence can still be seen today, in her fascination Artist winner of the call for project with fluidity as well as in the black and white palette, strong contrasts, and grainy quality of her works. Akin to a photo- grapher, Dressen allows her work to emerge out of the darkness, but instead of submerging the film in the photographic develo- per, she immerses her materials in the mixture of ink and water.

Dressen’s studio is a space for unbounded experimentation with different variables: material, time, space, and chance. She lets her work be led by these variables and develop itself organi- cally through repetition and layering but also deviation. To her, making is first and foremost an experiment, without an end in sight. In this experiment, intention and serendipity play an equal part, accounting for the uniqueness of each work and, at the same time, a sense of unity.

Alicja Melzacka

Notes / adresses :

12 10 LEXESTQUODNOTAMUS Antonin Giroud-Delorme, Chenôve (FR), 1985

The collection of items LexEstQuodNotamus borrows the refe- rence from the Council of the Notariats of the European Union, a Latin phrase meaning « What we write is the law ». Here, I use a materialist poetic to explore the bonds between different entities and emotional or legal territories, their inevitable entangle- ments, while focusing on a potential alternative acceptation of the notion of « law » and its conformation. Within arrangements in which symbolic and morphological dimensions get mixed up, different parties convene ideas of social constructions such as private property or family relationships. Artist winner of the call for project These small entities evoke mystic instruments halfway between amulets and talismans. Both generally function on the same symbolic plane but are directed by different intentionalities, one protecting against something and the other bringing a specific energy to reach it. I decided to keep the fine demarcation line to avoid any binary morality and to focus primarily on their visual potential and their intrinsic material.

The six items presented here try their hand at an additional stage and explore more particularly certain intimate and conflictual feelings in tension on which, according to me, any inter-perso- nal chemistry is greatly based and arises more precisely within what we call « communication ».

13 SOCIAL HARMONY 11 Clément Hébert, Caen (FR), 1995

« Utopian Schemes embody a desire for social harmony, but they are inevitably based on repression » David Reisman, in Texte zur Kunst, n° 21, 1996.

Harmony comes from the Latin word harmonia, meaning « arrange- ment ». Each element that is part of the installation is regarded as a small arrangement with reality. A structure that contains an architec- tural form evokes and hybridizes the gym, the temple, the retirement home and one of these cases studies houses, these Californian modernist houses that were offering a raking light in the entire house.

In each of these cases, it will be an architectural utopia, a thought Artist winner of the call for project based on an ideal of social harmony, yet that would have endured the affects of time and would contain the promises and the failures of the project. Nothing is lost. We have to live with that. The shape turns into a spaceship and initiates the ongoing plot. Under the light of the green neon, perfumed sticks plunged into a « vanilla-scented » liquid represent the appeasement of the low-cost domestic space. Through the window, the liquid contained in plastic bottles could also be a potion absorbed quickly, mix of cheap vodka and energy drink prepared by young people who stave off their boredom. Seen from the outside, the scale model lit by LED evokes a real estate agency. A real estate agency that would only sell a sort of social science fiction that tries to update structures and control mechanisms of bodies and stories.

Clément Hébert

Notes / adresses :

14 12 PAIN / ROSES Sophie Langohr, Liège (BE), 1974 Orto Botanico Studio, Liège (BE), 1989 Curator : Maxime Moinet

My work rests on the study and the interpretation of heritage artworks. I take over images or objects that are full of history and I express myself through their own methods of construction and production of sense. Using different reproduction processes, I revi- sit, distort and subvert them to make them talk differently in new contexts.

For this installation created in collaboration with stage designer Amanda Petrella* and designed especially for Art au Centre #5, I drew my inspiration from the ancient tradition of bride vases. These white porcelain vases were produced abundantly in France and Bel- gium between the middle of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. They were part of the wedding ritual and were pre- served, decorated with the flowers of the bride’s crown or bouquet, under a glass cover placed on a painted wood base. Their ornamen- tation appeals to the category of eternal love, fertility and prosperity whereas their shape of shell or largely open fan is a symbol of recep- tiveness to celestial influences. The organic nature of these vases that I reinterpreted freely demonstrates the naturalist thought of the 19th century. This ideology also fed an edifying misogynistic literature that for- merly contributed to the maintenance of female artists out of the public sphere and is illustrated in this text: « Women are still rarely inclined to intellectual activities […]. Given that they usually have a pleasant sense for the shape, quick perceptions, creativity and vivid imagination, it is no surprise that clay modelling tempts their pretty fingers. Likewise, the nature of women encourages them to sculpt imaginative and sentimental motifs rather than […] artworks resulting from a pure creative imagination. »*

In response to this and for the song*, I thus adopted this approach : « Du pain et des roses ! Du pain et des roses ! » And I let my hands remember the best and the worst to sculpt clay and foam breads.

Sophie Langohr

* Amanda Petrella, www.instagram.com/ortobotanicostudio * John Jackson Jarves, 1871. * La chanson populaire Bread and Roses a été composée à l’occasion de grèves ouvrières aux USA en 1912, ce slogan féministe a été repris par la Marche mondiale des femmes contre la pauvreté et la violence.

15 LE (TROU) 13 Paul Loubet, Béziers (FR), 1987 Curator : Bertrand Léonard

… Jean-Robert finishes his series of morning pull-ups in a round scream.o. A drop of sweat crosses his eyebrow and reaches his pupil.o. He puts on his holey underwear.o. Opens a Jupiler.o. The sound bounces on the four walls like a ping pong ball.o. Drops a crap in the toilet.o. Whistles loudly the tune of a spaghetti western.o. Jumps on the mushrooms.o. Picks up coins.o. Falls into the well.o. Finishes Super Mario Bros III for the thousandth time.o. Drums on his keyboard a beat in a continuous loop.o. Sketches spirals in his notebook.o. Feels like he is once more observed by the glasses of his periscope.o. The holey air bubble of his Pump Reebok squeals.o. Evening pull-ups, round scream.o. Engraves another pearl on the rock face with his worn knife.o. Closed his eyes while thinking about the pink flesh.o. A new day ends in the future…

Paul Loubet’s paintings combine naïve art, graphic design, graf- fiti, abstract art and illustration. His minimalist approach melts into his generous and playful compositions. Outsider cultures, tapestry or the pixel aesthetics of videogames merge to create a personal graphic language available to all. He creates alphabets of shapes in constant mutation. The post-apocalyptic thematic that he tackles sometimes turn out to be prophetic. Le (Trou) proposes a reflection on isolation, boredom and voyeurism. Obvious similarities to real facts…

Bertrand Léonard

16 14 DIGITAL PANOPTICON Lilly Lulay, Frankfurt am Main (DE), 1985 Curator : Philippe Braem

Try for a moment to visualize all your online activities of these last days. What’s impossible for you is at the heart of Google’s business plan. Unlike you, the company remembers each word searched, each email sent and each way found thanks to its apps. What Google knows about you, me and the entire world, all secret services of the world can only dream about it. Like George Orwell’s Big Brother, Google observes us through the « telescreens » of our computers and smartphones. In 1984, Orwell installed his famous dystopia of a State of surveillance. One year later, I was born in a country that was shaped for decades by state surveillance from the right and left wings. I thus often wonder what a totalitarian state would do with all the personal data that Google currently possesses. What is the pur- pose of these traces of the daily life of millions of people, today and in the future ?

My installation gathers some info that I unconsciously injec- ted into the universe of Google. They are fragments of what I really did, saw and experienced on the 20/03/2020 but they are also info that were calculated wrongly by Google. Places I never visited are yet part of my history. These traces of my (fictive) life are stored by unknown eyes that remind of icons to de/acti- vate cookies. Each passer-by is at the same time observed and reflected in the reflective pupils of these eyes.

Philosopher Byung-Chul Han declares that, through our online activities supposedly inoffensive, we build ourselves a new form of digital panoptic. But as the current structures of power are friendly and seductive instead of being repressive, they are even more difficult to recognize and criticize.

Notes / adresses :

17 INFLATION 15 Anna Mancuso, Liège (BE), 1991 Curator : Mermermer (Mikail Koçak & Anna Ozanne)

Documentary filmmaker and artist Anna Mancuso combines video art and performance in her artistic work. The space behind the window turns into a high-risk laboratory in which the stages of the experience, the story of the past assay and the observation of what remains answer each other.

Slowly but surely, with only muscle strength, the organic faces the architecture, the air pushes the boundaries of space.

The realization of the installation lasted several days. Anna Man- cuso had brought inflatable objects, materials to make plaster, cameras, an air pump… She poured rectangular shapes. A bit later, once the material was dry, she slipped on her suit, her mask and her protective gloves. She eventually buckled down to the crucial and dangerous phase of her project :

The artwork functions as a sensual sensory stimulus: relaxing pleasure to passively attend a disaster foretold from the street.

What happened ? Posted in front of the window, facing the inde- lible stains of the past surrealist event, and thanks to the video archives broadcasted in this tiny exhibition space, you will see for yourself the extent of the damage. You will understand that « crea- ting means destroying » and vice versa, and that failure is relative and daring is always rewarded.

Mermermer

Notes / adresses :

18 16 NUÉE ET CHAMBRES FROIDES Ludovic Mennesson, Paris (FR), 1985

I am an artist living in Brussels. I chose to explore sculpture in its most expanded scope.

While I regularly borrow from the history of art or from scientific and educational imagery, I also like to search very concretely the urban space that surrounds me to turn it into my raw material. Fragments of architecture, loose stones and stained-glass win- dows form this exhibition and evoke the rigorous and intimate classification of cabinets of curiosities. Windows, cages and stands display their poetic and trivial « wonders » that are direc-

Artist winner of the call for project tly stemming from the universe of urban construction. Chambres froides is a series of sculptures that evoke the memory of ano- nymous ruins in a restructuring building.

On the surface, the glass window of an old clothing store gets spangled with bird motifs usually used to prevent birds from crashing into houses. The birds of Nuée guide and block the view by transforming the commercial showcase into a double- sided pictorial fresco.

Ludovic Mennesson

19 OASIS 17 Collectif muesli, Bruxelles (BE), 2014 Louis Darcel, Paris (FR), 1988 • Hannah De Corte, Bruxelles (BE), 1988 • João Freitas, Coimbra (PT), 1989

Together we work with sensitive materials. The resulting artworks are not fixed but in constant adaptation with their envi- ronment and its multiple constituent factors. In a partnership with the material and its possibilities, we give birth to shapes that we let blossom without having a direct influence on them.

Our paintings darken or brighten slowly in shades ranging from pink to blue and spread or recant to the pace of ambient humi- dity through crystallization and saturation phenomenons. The weather conditions and the specificities of the occupied window are crucial parameters that forge the « painting ». Likewise, the fabric support and the selected frame have an impact on the created surfaces. They also register the hits of their manipula- tion and the transport that can leave marks. Undisciplined, the paintings have an elusive and atypical behavior. The surfaces do Collective of artistsCollective winner of the call for project not stick to any of our beauty standard and change from a nearly monochrome aspect to an expressionist look, sometimes even close to the kitsch aspect.

Through all these factors that interact directly with the chemical process, a canvas is never identical to another. In its own way, our project marks the passage of time, punctuating the routine of the passer-by throughout the exhibition. Change is a surprise for the regular passer-by, its promise is an invitation for the spectator to come back and observe it.

Notes / adresses :

20 18 FLY-IN-FLY-OUT Eva Pel, Purmerend (NL) Curator : Arthur Cordier

What is the visual impact of e-commerce on the local community surrounding Liège’s airport ?

Eva Pel looks into the relation between e-commerce and the rapid disappearance of small shops in city centers. The combination of large-scale shopping malls and online shopping is greatly affec- ting local shop owners. In Liège, the expanding airport transforms local areas into direct neighbours of industrial landscapes, war- ehouses and distribution centres. Houses are being demolished and inhabitants expropriated. Communal structures fall apart.

Through these observations Pel developed a series of boxes inspired by online stores such as Amazon, Bolcom, Zalando, Coolblue or Hema. The boxes are highly accurate hand-painted replicas. The boxes are shipped and displayed in the city center by the artist, as part of Art au Centre fifth Edition. The window storefront maps the increasing air traffic in the near future. At first sight the delivery boxes look similar to disposable cardboard packages. Yet from close-up they are the product, meant to be kept instead of disposed.

Pel’s work questions the impact of online shopping seemingly immaterial, on our urban landscapes. The effects of high-speed delivery services and the relation to international airport hubs consist the focus of her practice in the Euregio.

L’exposition a été rendue possible grâce à l’appui de l’Ambassade des Pays-Bas en Belgique.

21 LES BRUITS VIENNENT DE L’EXTÉRIEUR ET DE L’INTÉRIEUR 19 Etiennette Plantis, Bretagne (FR), 1986

I’m a collector, it is my first artistic practice. My collection, on which I have been working, rests on the great utopia of holiday villages. Besides the expected aspect of travelers out enjoying themselves, there is a sociological lexicon, an architecture, a phy- sical and mental connection linked to these spaces that deeply disconcert me and that I like: azure blue, stripes, the very cheap materials of the furniture, « artworks » thrown here and there to play to the gallery, the color of the curtains and the overzealous- ness, naivety too. My work organizes itself like a fake scenery with a singular and hierarchical order. As a system that would have no more limit, leading to a heterogeneous installation, a juxtaposition Artist winner of the call for project of elements, a multitude of artefacts, pilings on the ground, on the wall, varieties of textures, fabrics, ceramics, paint, carpet, a com- position of different uses. The paint is then sprayed, catapulted, collapsing, it is subject to visual dissidences but nonetheless responds to a classic and traditional pictorial language. A sin- gular and hybrid vocabulary calls the tune towards a repertoire of shapes, full of freedom, pleasure and enjoyment. The motif is built up archaically, as a reference to the history of collage. The division of gestures isolates signs and establishes other plastic elements of language: a compromise between serious parody and happy irony. The analysis of my photographic collection of lost paradises, collective illusion, widespread denial, exaggerated conformism is at the heart of my work. Questioning unreachable hopes, projections linked to curious spaces, to hopeless materials, creating a universe of resurgences, objects of desire, mysterious wishes, and a casual contemplation. « And you? How do you imagine happiness? »

Etiennette Plantis

Notes / adresses :

22 20 STÉRILE Pierre Rebufy, Bordeaux (FR), 1982 Curator : Maxime Moinet

In his window, Pierre Rebufy displays a collection of hybrid artworks, at the frontiers of painting and sculpture, stemming from the Stérile project. They are the result of multiple experimen- tal operations carried out on and from building materials, items and rubbish selected carefully based on their creative potential : XPS insulating, stainless steel, skin, jesmonite, megaphone, wax…

In his paintings, he uses as a support waterproof insulation panels that endure a series of chemical experiences. The resulting accidents are the first step of his work. The chemical chaos is then reorganized, dissected and gaged by other mas- tered gestures. When one takes a closer look at the artwork, the surface that seemed to be flat at first sight reveals diffe- rent alterations and textures. The whole is then integrated into acrylic frames that give the paintings the appearance of frescos that were removed from their original walls.

Overwhelming natural generosity of organic decomposi- tion vs sterility and asepsis. Scientific dystopic fantasy, mutation and hybridity of our chemical world.

Pierre Rebufy has been living and working in Brus- sels for more than ten years. He studied at the ERG (Brussels) and the KASK (Ghent).

23 VEILLEUSE 21 Amélie Scotta, Nantes, 1983 Curator : Thibaut Wauthion

Amélie Scotta’s architectures directly question our housing conditions and the town planning that results from it, in other words, our life within a neighborhood, a community and overall a society. Moreover, the metropolitan trend towards verticality and monumentality represents an intrinsic feature of her work. As these architectures whose top gets away from the ground to better caress the sky in proportions that are always more significant, the drawings and photographs of the artist focus on this notion of infinity by questioning the technical and ethi- cal limits of humanity. How far will we go ? What height will we reach to develop always denser and more unbearable towns ? Our lifestyle, the way we surround ourselves, the way we cram is questioned through these artworks.

Thibaut Wauthion

Veilleuse is an installation that gives prominence to the line, the line of the horizon standing out between the buildings, the lines of our architectures and our cities in constant development. It also evokes the connection between modern metropolis and the night. Constantly in standby mode, we live in a world where darkness and night vision become scarce to make room for per- manent daylight. The title Veilleuse, a small lamp constantly lit, echoes our ancestral fear of the dark and heights, forcing us to agglutinate, to build and to light up always more. It also refers to the comforting little blue flame kept to launch our devices. Com- bining photography and drawing, the installation spreads out on various plans: the wall, the window and the space that connects them. Shades of black and blue dominate, but so do the effects of transfer, transparence and vacuum construction.

Amélie Scotta

24 22 SUN IN MY BELLY Indre Svirplytė, Panevèžys (LIT), 1992 Curator : Pauline Salinas Segura

Indre Svirplytė uses drawing and tapestry to plunge us into a mythology populated by strange characters: a zany cult of a Sun God revered by an absurd bestiary, by a phantasmagoric zoology shaking itself under its colorful rays. Her motifs stem from diffe- rent religious iconographies, Gardens of Bliss or final judgment, and also from her daily dreams and experiences.

Simultaneously Eden or Hell, they borrow as much from the swarming of Bosch’s scenes as from the childish spontaneity of outsider art.

The repetitive manipulation of textile materials plunges her into a meditative state that enables her to exorcize an anxiety inhe- rent in our contemporary existences. Without any preparatory drawing and following a « go with the flow » philosophy that highlights the urgency and the visceral nature of her artworks, her figures directly come alive on the canvas and form a world with its own laws and its own language.

Pauline Salinas Segura

Notes / adresses :

25 TISSER LES NUAGES 23 Nina Tomas, Béziers (FR), 1989 Curator : Saryna Nyssen

For this second participation to Art au Centre, the artwork displayed by Nina Tomas represents a kind of milestone of the evolution of her practice, the mark of a return to her roots. After reaching a point of breakdown last November, the artist aspires to come back to a more formal kind of art, less narrative and figurative, with rawer and almost « rude » compositions.

The composition here plays a key role: whether within each of the paintings or from a painting to another (increasing format) or even beyond the artwork itself. An extra filter is actually added when the artwork invades the totality of the display window, like a panel in a preexisting frame. Is it a frame in a frame ? A window in a window ? By fragmenting and juxtaposing plans and spaces, by playing with the proportions and by adding colors (flat tints or shaded off), shapes, motifs and different textures in her paintings, she creates effects of contrast, breakdown, emptiness and fullness, but also a harmonious and coherent whole. These elements enable her to give rhythm to her paintings and to forge links between them.

While Nina Tomas wants to distance herself from figuration and narration, there are still some discrete signs of them. Each of the paintings that form this triptych is based on a photograph of the artist or an image she selected carefully. And if the spectator is atten- tive, he might notice some details of them. With her pictures, the painter tries to connect different countries and their cultures. On the left, it is possible to discern Brussels urban landscape through which she introduces a tension between organic, geometric and industrial motifs. On the right, a tarpaulin sloppily hanged over an onions stall in India inspired her to work the hang, a motif particularly interesting for the artist given its histo- rical use by the great masters since the Renaissance, given its connection to femininity in art history and given the technique used here – oil painting, which requires patience and delicacy. At the center, an artwork by Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1260-1319) lead her to structure the stage in two levels, traced on a textile with printed motifs that is directly stretched on the frame. This motif is reused manually at other spots of the triptych. The attention to detail and the repeated gesture show the perfectionist and almost obses- sional likings of the artist, but also the spiritual and thoughtful dimension related to the creation of the painting.

Nina Tomas’ paintings don’t rest on any sketch and get built progressively, by superimpo- sition of pictorial layers. They transform over time in an uncontrolled and uncontrollable way, giving free rein to impulsiveness and unconsciousness. It is a slow process and what we have today in front of us is not a « finished product » because other levels of reading will be generated with the addition of extra panels in the future. Nina Tomas considers her polyptych as a journey that we can follow to travel and lose ourselves in it.

Alix Nyssen 24 ÉVEILLE MOI CRÉPUSCULE SUBLUNAIRE Camille Tsvetoukhine, Angers (FR), 1987 Curator : Sophie Delhasse

A short while ago, I came across, by chance – if chance really exists – , a small book entitled The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction written by Ursula K. Le Guin and prefaced by Donna Haraway. This « Carrier Bag », this container that Le Guin places at the heart of the history of humanity as the first artefact created by humans – in opposition to the sharp tool or the deadly army – puts in perspective another history that brings an entirely transcended vision of our place in the world, our evolution and our ability to transform reality. This metaphor of the receptacle, the container, the bag that overflows with elements and alternative histories seems relevant to me to describe Camille Tsvetoukhine’s work. Indeed, the artworks of the artist spread out like a constellation of fragments, signs or symbols. Each of them are the gateway to a narrative or discursive universe whose story creation would be the final form. Each drawing, each painting, each ceramic, each textile, each text would become the container of a new history, a dimension both fictive and real that is able to reveal « our ability to invent myths to comprehend the world in which we live. »*

The artworks presented in the display window drag us into ano- ther dimension through a Carroll-like layout, a dimension full of levitating capes, esoteric ceramics and an outsize paintbrush. Using organic materials such as textile or clay and the figuration of landscape and natural ornaments, the artist reclaims with humor and diversion the emblematic figure of the witch, a figure of emancipation and subversion that has been allowing an eco- feminist questioning of our society since the 1960s. It might be a matter of detecting a metaphor of the artist in the alterity of the witch, the ritual making room for the artwork and its poten- tial of transformation and the reappropriation of our view of the world.

Sophie Delhasse

Notes / adresses :

27 * Ursula K. Le Guin, Le Langage de la nuit, p. 92. A PIT MAKES A PILE 25 Jan Vandeplancke, Gand (BE), 1997 Curator : Pauline Salinas Segura

While her artistic practice originally has its roots in the field of illustration, she now blossoms in three dimensions and creates plane volumes made of timber that gets polished so meti- culously that it takes the shade and the delicacy of precious essences. Her three-dimensional artwork also takes the form of modular structures defying the spaces into which they fit and used to exhibit smaller objects.

Her teeming and deeply fun universe thrives on the influence of comics, comic strips, board games, canteen gastronomy or outdated ads from King Baudouin’s Belgium. This collection of shapes, objects and absurd figures generates a fantasy that is common to the instinctively identifiable edges.

For this fifth edition of Art au Centre, Jan presents us a wide wood structure showing on its side several elements buried under its flat surface. This enclosed whole entirely made of angles, horizontality and straight lines with visible grids, evokes a singular archaeological site. A landscape, a model, mountains ready to be explored. Are the excavations ongoing or is this work site interrupted, abandoned ?

Pauline Salinas Segura

Notes / adresses :

28 26 CULTURAL ISOLATION Christy Westhovens, Maastricht (NL), 1995 Curator : Alicja Melzacka

The first iteration of this work was made invisible, working silently in an underground gallery. Like hidden-away hardware of the many data centres popping up across Europe, just beyond the reach of the collective imagination, it was relentlessly wor- king, documenting, processing data. Capturing the movements of all the potential guests, and quantifying them. Cataloguing unfulfilled encounters.

« It is legal to photograph or videotape anything and anyone on any public property, within reasonable community standards. » But where does the private space end and the public begin ? And what is reasonable ? Museums mine for data to sustain them- selves; to track visitors’ patterns, to turn visitors’ numbers into currency. Do customers of the gift shop and cafe count amongst visitors ? When does a passer-by become a visitor ? A viewer ? An image ? A number ?

Art viewing in vitrines. Window-shopping in museums. Momen- tary encounters mediated through glass – an obvious corona reference ? Think pre-corona: this phenomenon dates back much earlier. Unused tickets, unclaimed booked seats, ghost visitors, hundreds of unseen objects. All this invisible labour.

Now it is out, in the light, but not in the spotlight. It keeps on wor- king, running background tasks. It transforms movement into light into code into image. It performs. And, perhaps unawares, you are part of this performance. The material proof is piling up, curling like a snake across the space. Perhaps you passed by without noticing it. But it noticed you.

Camellia Czajka

29 SICILE ARDENTE 27 Students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania, Sicily (IT)

In February 2020, the Aquilone ASBL presented Tà Erotikà, an ero- tic collection of artistic productions created by young students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania, Sicily. Unfortunately, this exhibition was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the catalogue published for this exhibition, the collection is presented as follows: « Liège meets Catania, its culture and its artistic savoir-faire thanks to a series of activities […] we welco- med with great interest the proposal of hosting […] an exhibition made by young students from the School of Painting of the Aca- demy of Fine Arts in Catania, […] Tà Erotikà. »

As the public from Liège did not have the time to enjoy the artworks of these young Sicilian artists, we contacted Art au Centre and they kindly invited us to occupy a window to ward off bad luck and to reward the important work of the people who ini- tiated the project.

The exhibition has been revised and adapted to Art au Centre, it is now entitled SicIle Ardente and displays the world of things of Eros. This world surrounds us without any distinction of gender as it comes from the inspiration that dilates and contracts the large belly of the earth.

The young Sicilian artists put their talent at the service of the theme. We clearly see that eroticism is one of the facets of « the love that stirs the sun and the other stars », as our spiritual father Dante Alighieri teaches us. Each era and each human culture have their own declension. Any man and any woman live the moment of carnal love according to their own instincts and reasons.

The students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania show a talent that is inspired by the millennium-long history of their land. The genius loci beat and keeps on beating in its entrails, where the lava of the Etna escapes, with a powerful erotic blast.

Francesco di Vincenzo

30 LIÈGE 04 FEBRUARY — 30 APRIL 2021 Open-air exhibition of 32 artists in 25 windows of empty stores. Art project to revitalize the city center of Liège. For more informations www.artaucentre.be Follow us @artaucentreliege

Art au centre © 2021 Coordination Maxime Moinet Assitant, coordination Marla Shenaj Graphic design Mikail Koçak (mermermer) Proofreading Alix Nyssen, Pauline Salinas Segura Translate Gérome Henrion Typography Roboto, par Christian Robertson Paper Offset blanc FSC, 90 g/m2 Printing Imprimerie SNEL 21, rue Fond des Fourches, 4041 Vottem (BE)