De la Lenteur et de la Mesure

Initially, the project was meant to be a solo show by Tom Lowe, a British artist (based in Brussels for a while), whose multi-faceted work is entirely generated and activated by coincidences, whether they be metrical or of another kind. It is always such coincidences which inform the inscription of his works in a given space. Day after day, under his T-shirt, Tom wears a ruler, which allows him to verify instantly the correspondances fueling his imagination and creativity. 98 cm. is in the present case the golden number / measure which has triggered the activation of some existing pieces and elicited the creation of new pieces for the all so specific space of Maison Grégoire. The invitation of Béatrice Balcou, an artist whose work we have been supporting since 2011, originates in a temporal rather than metrical coincidence: The reception, shortly after the studio visit with Tom Lowe, of one of her Pièces Assistantes, in the present case a hanging rail specifically made for a painting by Tom Lowe, on the occasion of an exhibition to which they both participated in a Brussels gallery a couple of years ago. Béatrice Balcou’s body of work originates in a reflexion on our relationship to time, contemplation and slowness. Over the past years, it was exemplified by her Cérémonies, carefully orchestrated and choreographed performances during which Béatrice, with a precision and concentration of all instants, very slowly and progressively takes out a given art work from a collection, delicately freeing it from its preservation storage conditioning, to reveal it and offer it for a few moments to the contemplation of her audience. The strength of these somehow curatorial epiphanies lays in their symmetrical construction, whereby the progressive apparition and contemplation of the artwork is followed by the just as slow and carefully orchestrated repacking / reconditioning of the piece in its crate or packaging. This invitation to slowness, to a self-conscious and concentrated practice of the gaze, acts thereby as a sort of exhortation to a metaphysical awareness of the cycles of life and nature, as well as a memento of our common fate - as living beings or unanimated objects - doomed in the medium term to fading, oblivion and disappearance. For these epiphanic performances of a rare beauty, Balcou usually trains with what she called Placébos id est est objects, generally wooden, reproducing the artwork to be manipulated during the corresponding Cérémonie. Progressively, further to different exhibition-oriented presentations of her research and performances, these Placébos have acquired a form of plastic autonomy. This is whence probably the idea of conceiving Pièces Assistantes to the work of other artists, which triggered the encounter with the work of Tom Lowe, is derived from. For De la Lenteur et de la Mesure, Béatrice will conceive a new Pièce Assistante, specially conceived for and at the scale of Maison, whose singularity and status of architectural masterpiece she thereby underlines. The title and thematic red thread of the exhibition originates in the encounter and confrontation of these two creative universes. De fil en aiguille, upon further discoveries, affinities and coincidences, the exhibition opened up to include further proposals, multiplying the narrative, reading threads and apprehensions of the project. A curatorial and almost therapeutical dimension, alongside a sort of metaphysical invitation are also present in the video by young French artist Anaïs Chabeur, recently graduated from HISK, where the work of a profession often ignored by our society marked by hyper-consumerism and « adulescent » values is filmed with precision, care and slowness. The painterly palettes-cum-grave stones by Shankar Lestréhan, a graduate of the ISAC/Espace urbain department of ArBA-EsA (the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels) acted originally as « props » for his graduation performance and form here an amusing, if thoughtful, counterpoint to Chabeur’s video. Rokko Miyoshi questions in his work the relationships, correspondances or differences in forms, temporalities and measures which he encounters around him. His interventions or gestures operate through and generate equivalences or singular translations, which are generally minimal and very subtle. That is what he will do here in framing specifically original found archival photographs and in disrupting the functioning of a measuring instrument, linked to the family heritage of the owner of Maison Grégoire. Also ultra-thin, if multi-layered, would be Boris Thiébaut intervention in the new, unreleased series of little panels which we present here. This degree zero of painterly radicalism is nevertheless informed by a subtle assemblage and compositional work which will escape to a rapid onlooker. A discrete and just as radical counterpoint to the themes of the show will be brought about by the performative proposal by Brussels-based, Irish Ella de Burca, whose work is informed by the accidents and semantic shifts of our languages. In her practice, text often unfolds in an effective, visual and object-based form, which extends and opens up its narratives. In the present case, the starting point of her project, echoing the modernist environment of Maison Grégoire, originates in a research on the relationships between Henry Van de Velde and his wife Maria Sèthe, seen through Ella’s usual prism of anxiety and pre-performative stress. A radically different relationship to reading and writing, to slowness and concentration unfolds in the two works from the series Le superflu doit attendre by French Marianne Mispelaëre, one of which was specifically carried out on the occasion of the exhibition. These works express a direct if subtle political reflexion and commitment through the traces left by the reading of specific feminist books by the artist. In this sense, they also echo, in an intimate and confidential, maybe even more immaterial and veiled fashion, the Cérémonies by Béatrice Balcou, which we discussed here above. In both cases, the works or artefacts act indeed literally as support of the performative actions. In real, they are copper plates which keep the variable corporal traces, depending on a multitude of parameters, by the readings made by Marianne. Upon completion of the reading, the plate is simply inscribed with the title of the book which was read thereupon, and sealed by a glass, thus preserving the alterations of the copper generated by the intellectual work and corporal presence of the artist. To wrap it up all, a final coincidence and encounter triggered the last invitation / contribution to the show: the encounter between a discrete and integrated trompe-l’oeil sculpture by Tom Lowe and Compadre, an edition produced by one of the members of the collective Self Luminous Society (Slim Denken, Hayne E. Day, Benny Snouta & José). We will replicate this encounter in our project, also looking forward to the performative proposal which Self Luminous Society will elaborate after discovering this deliciously and continuously « in the making » exhibition. Until then, we warmly invite you to take the time to discover, at your own pace, De la Lenteur et de la Mesure and the proposals which we all have put together for you. Emmanuel Lambion - Bn PROJECTS