One person

Rosa, Rosa, Rosae, Rosae, is an exhibition imagined by Pauline Hatzigeorgiou for the art space SB34. The theme of this exhibition is the idea of “transmission” envisaged under different angles (education, translation and its differences and gaps...). Within this context come works on paper made out of political leaflets covered with color layers and stamped poems. Political leaflets like the ones widly distributed in the mailboxes of the inhabitants of Brussels in 2019 on the occasion of the local and european elections. The color layer lets the original text of the leaflet visible, while the new text, overprinted in white, interacts with it, creating a superposition of languages. On one side is a snappy discourse, sometimes even populistic, full of wills and intentions for the future (what they wish for the next generation, what they want to pass on). On the other side is a more erratic and humoristic discourse. The two, intertwined, creating a particular kind of political/poetical language.

The Aurelio Petroni Foundation is established in an old palace set up on the heights of Salerno, in the village of San Cipriano Picentino, close to Pompei and Napoli. At the end of a 12 days residency, is inaugurated an exhibition of wall drawings, positionned in different angles of the rooms on the ground floors (the entrance hall, the stables...). It is an exhibition of texts/frescoes that invokes the soul of the building and the region, where wall texts were numerous in the private and public sphere, and always had a significance during the pagan, roman, or christian times. The texts drawn on the walls echo also contemporary Italy, or offer more universal meditations. 

The title of the exhibition Au(s) Mont(s) Sans(s) Souci(s) is inspired by the name of a Brussels street, and by a song written by the french singer Jean-Louis Murat. The letter “s” is added to the title, as if to accentuate its sound dimension (like in the famous maxim of french playwriter Racine “Qui sont ces serpents qui sifflent sur nos têtes” –Who are these snakes whistling over our heads). The “s” is also here to express a plural, attached to the singular (in French, the letter “s” is added to nouns to express their plural, like in English). Mural compositions are spread in the spaces of the gallery, sometimes at unexpected heights. The space of the gallery is taken, metaphorically, for another space, wider, and urban, made of dominant elevations. Works mixed drawings of characters and photographs of contemporary cities, printed on glass, PVC, metal, through silkscreen and lithographic techniques. There is also an additionnal blue light that accentuate a cold atmosphere. Characters look like being imprisonned in the logics of David against Goliath, Sysyphus, or Damocles.

Red Boll / Mentus exchanges ironically two famous brands names (Red Bull and Mentos), alluding to this common habit of companies changing their names to rebrand their images, in order often to erase an embarassing previous public image or to stimulate sales. To get a new virginity, without especially changing their products. The exhibition takes place in a vitrine of an abandonned commercial centre in Brussels, re-colonized by art galleries in the last years. In this narrow space visible day and night (or almost), appears an installation of coloured lights, broken but printed pieces of glass, metalic bars, a can of Red Bull and a pot of Mentos in the role of the waste, or abandonned elements, or heroes of the past...

On the occasion of the arrival of a new director, the Institut Supérieur pour l’Etude du Langage Plastique (a Brussels contemporary art center hosting exhibitions and conferences since almost 50 years) expresses the wish to present its new vision for the future, through a specific program presented on the Autumn of 2016. Invited to participate to this particular moment, the idea arises to “infiltrate” the program with a ghost exhibition, a night of performances and graphic interventions on the existing communication material (leaflets, posters, wall texts, press releases). The ghost exhibition is inserted in between an introductory group show called “Table of content” and a solo exhibition by the artist Catharina Van Eetvelde. Under the title “De l’assemblée à l’imprimante” (meaning from the assembly to the printer), half marxist-leninist, half Apple comes an exhibition installed in the whole building, including in its remote and underused corners, with personnal works and works from others, from the previous group show, and the forthcoming solo show. Thus, it is a solo exhibition disguised in a group show, or the opposite. The communication material is treated with the same mixture of times and identities. The invitation card of the ghost exhibition, for example, is made of a combination of the image of the invitation card of Table of content, and the solo show of Van Eetvelde, and a personnal drawing, representing a badly drawn “character”, floating above the images, if not above the whole situation.

Musumeci is a private art space runned by a couple of Sicilians in Brussels. In their single room exhibition space, comes an installation called Palio!, referencing the traditional horses race of Sienna. Where horses and their riders run crazily around a square during a 5 minutes race, once or twice a year. The installation follows a loose circular structure around the space, with different silkscreen prints. One print is repeated several times, in different colors: it’s a photograph of graffiti, made by someone on a skyscraper's wall in Milan. It says “Grattacieli rubano il cielo” (skyscrapers steal the sky). The press release is a register of the falls of riders, during the previous editions of the race. On top of each copy of the printed press release, a vehement drawing is made, with different italian words generally used as encouragement by sports’s public.