Exhibitions

This exhibition is not retrospective, but rather “introspective”, according to the artist himself.

In this journey through time, which brings together a selection of recent paintings, as well as paintings going back some 15 years, Gauthier Hubert presents the relationships that exist between some of these paintings. As in a family tree, as part of his process, he brings together certain works which, on the face of it, seem to have nothing in common, but which would in reality not even exist without the connection between them.

The work of Yves Lecomte (Binche 1974, lives and works in Brussels) is primarily structured around enjoyment, effacement, duplication, the past and happenstance. He brings to life the possibilities and aporia of duplication, reflection, logical and visual paradoxes, linguistical turnarounds and mises en abyme.

FR

GAUTHIER HUBERT & YVES LECOMTE : FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE MIRROR
MEETING WITH PIERRE-YVES DESAIVE

Pierre-Yves Desaive is an art historian (University of Liège), a curator for contemporary art at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, an exhibition curator, a teacher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels (La Cambre, Brussels), the president of the Belgian Association of Art Critics (ABCA) and a regular contributor to publications on contemporary art.

As part of Gauthier Hubert's exhibitions at the Botanique, the artist released "Viral", a publication in La Lettre Volée. Meeting with François Deconinck, author of two texts of the book.

"One could say that Gauthier Hubert's art is language in a gaseous state that finds its point of condensation in the titles of his paintings."
François Deconinck

In this second part, Gauthier Hubert breaks down the bonds of his “ réunion de famille” (un goût de liberté) exhibition and completely changes its meaning by removing from it everything which does not relate to people.

Winner of the ART CONTEST 2019, Yoel Pytowski has been given the opportunity to expose his work in the Botanique Gallery in the context of ART CONTEST 2020.

In his in-situ installations, space and questions around space form the central narrative for Yoel Pytowski, as he invites in construction, destruction or past or future reconstructions.

For the last 5 years, his practice has mainly focussed on large-scale architectural installations. He introduces new physical elements or creates voids in a given place, thus upsetting the understanding of the pre-existing space in which various elements – mostly made of concrete - then seem to buried in the ground or emerging from it. This creates an ambiguity in which it is often hard to identify the artist’s work. Where do we look, where are we, what was there here before and for how long? …

Cécile Massart is a Belgian artist who uses different mediums: drawing, engraving, installations, photography, video, artist’s book. In 1994, the matter of locating sites used for the storage of radioactive waste becomes the primary subject of her work. She seeks to raise awareness about the visibility of these sites among the agencies managing them. Her goal is to incorporate this uniquely 21st century archaeological stratus into the landscape, thus calling on every individuals’ own sense of responsibility. What type of energy policy do we want for the future? What do we want to pass down to future generations?

Tourism, immigration and then the place where they meet. In the winter of 2020-2021, in the Botanique Gallery, Céline Cuvelier invites us to reflect on the way we travel and why. Be it a painting, sculpture or an installation, each of her iterations suggest a map, builds a landscape. The outline of a hybrid territory appears, drawn from experiences, expectations and pretexts, as well as our questions that have gone unanswered.

Memymom is the collaboration between mother-daughter artist duo Marilène Coolens & Lisa De Boeck. Two self-taught photographers who work and live in Brussels, Belgium. The cross-generational project began with what the artist duo describes as The Umbilical Vein, a reference to the analogue image made between 1990 and 2003. An intimate archive of family photos in which Marilène encouraged Lisa to express herself and to invent her own improvised theatre sketches.

Over the years, these semi-staged dreamscape portraits developed into a mature conversation that deals not only with metamorphosis, personal identity, potential, and the mother-daughter relationship, but has evolved into a plea for sensual analysis and tragic romanticism. It reveals both the foundations of the close bond and the professional career of this artistic duo, who have worked together under the moniker memymom since 2004.

Van Aarle explores the boundaries of photography, the medium-specific properties and how they relate to the perception of reality. Such as the effect of light through time, the transformation of invasive advertising panels into self-destructive non-places or, as in Moving Mountains, the movement of the planet through time and space. He experiments with different photographic techniques, adds external elements to the image or combines different images into a new whole.

"Moving Mountains" shows mountains in ways we cannot see them. Through photography they obtain their poetic mobility. They start to move and by doing so, they can move us.

In this new exhibition, Benjamin Installé displays ambitious painting, which occupies the entirety of the Botanique Gallery. Somewhere between a large-scale historical scene, the backdrop of a play and cymatium mouldings, the focal piece of the exhibition represents a deserted space, littered with objects that have clearly been left behind by their owners and await their hypothetical return. The occupants of the painting - artists, construction workers, delivery workers or homeless people - have gone. They might have simply left their place of work at the end of the day, or perhaps we arrive just after the party has ended and everyone has already gone home to nurse a hangover.

Following Cédric Dambrain’s performance as part of Stephan Bailleux’s monographic exhibition La peinture et son double, at the Musée d'Ixelles in 2014, the two artists decided to further develop their collaboration and to jointly explore common means of expression within the same architectural framework: the Botanique Museum. This space not only provides a sense of cohesion between their respective disciplines, it also serves as a setting inextricably linked to their artwork.

This exhibition, Bounce, focusses on the interplay between connected art forms: triggering the spectators’ active perception and drawing them in to become an intrinsic part of the artwork.

This exhibition – the first of its kind - designed as an experience, identifies the creation of links as one of the fundamental questions of contemporary art.

The relationship to space and habitat is central to the work of Élise Peroi, which is permeated by Michel Foucault's reflections on "heterotopias". He writes that "The garden is a carpet where the whole world comes to accomplish its symbolic perfection and the carpet is a mobile garden through space". Through her weavings, Élise Peroi creates suspended spaces, microcosms in which the relationship to real time is revisited and in which the imagination is invited to take up residence. Since the dawn of time, gardens have been sacred spaces. The spirituality of Persian gardens blends with the beauty and minimalism of Japanese Zen gardens, which seek, in miniature scale, to reproduce the essence and grandeur of nature. In some of her works, Élise Peroi integrates slender, geometric steel structures that seem to project the contours of the weavings into space where strong lines intertwine.

This breathes life into the structure, almost playing with the emptiness, creating an additional dialogue with the surrounding space.

For Elise Peroi, carpets and their symbolism carry memories and a part of the collective imagination.
Textile also shares etymological roots with language: "textus" means both text and textile (both are woven together) and "textere" describes both composing, assembling, telling or narrating and weaving or braiding.

Virginie Mamet

THE MUSEUM IS REOPENING!

The Botanique team and Sébastien Bonin are delighted to be able to welcome you back to the Museum to (re)discover "DOCUMENTI", an exhibition by Sébastien Bonin , extended from 19 June to 19 July.

While opening hours are reduced (Friday - Sunday), we will be implementing measures to ensure the best possible conditions during your visit.

If you’d like to benefit from this exclusive experience (35 visitors/hour), we advise you to book tickets online for a specific date and time. This also applies to holders of a MuseumPassMusée.

Below you will find detailed information regarding our safety measures and the services that will be available at Botanique.

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Two years of Sébastien Bonin’s work will be on display at the "DOCUMENTI" exhibition. Painted artwork and photograms will share their stories on the walls, as connoisseurs of the History of Painting revel in the experience of seeing each of his pieces portray small aspects of world art history and the legacy of the great Masters.

THIS EXHIBITION IS SUSPENDED


"A review already at Rif-Raf!"

He brought out his first EP in 2016 with the label I-SEL/P based in Saint-Gilles, after creating several self-produced CDs (which stood out thanks to the attention given to the artwork). He has also participated in compilations made by foreign labels, but now this Etterbeek native is back with his first LP out at the end of the winter of 2020. It almost seems like a rite of passage, an act of maturity as our Swiss friends might say when someone passes an educational milestone – there is even a Swiss Maturity Committee! Imagine how we would quiver if we had to face such a Committee, given how we already shudder in Wallonia when we have to submit a subsidy request for so-called non-classical music. But let’s get back to the artist.