Mireille Roobaert - Denis Meyers

This exhibition of photographs is the result of a collaboration and a co-creation between Mireille Roobaert and Denis Meyers. It is the visual dialogue between a photographer and a typographer. A work of memory, the exhibition makes the link between the words sprayed on the stone like an ephémère cry, and Mireille Roobaert's gift for architectural photography. From the 25,000 square meters of hope and spleen tagged by Denis in eighteen months on the walls of the former Solvay building destined to be destroyed, Mireille conceived anamorphoses, panoramic photos taken at 360° and rendered flat. These images then became monumental works, or backlit light boxes, with frames drawn and then graffitied by Denis, each one unique. The meeting between the graphic universes of Mireille and Denis occurred at first without their protagonists. One day, the photographer saw an advertisement from Arkadia offering an official visit of the building covered with short sentences from the artist's guts. She went there out of curiosity, not expecting to be so overwhelmed by the words put into shape, and by the magnitude of the project spread before her eyes. "It's rare and precious to think big in Belgium. I was seized by the power and the aesthetics of this realization. By the way the monochromy has become one with the soul of the Solvay building. From this revelation, Mireille imagined a project: she proposed to carry out a work of memory, all the more important as the building was destined to be demolished. She was impressed by the artist, but even more so by his achievements. Talented and persistent, she obtained free access to the space, returned perhaps 25 times, including with a drone. In a few months, she took more than 3000 pictures of Denis' words (ills), to finally retain 400 of them, in color and black and white.