LA VERRIÈRE, BRUSSELS
SEPTEMBER 5 TO NOVEMBER 8, 2019
PREVIEW: WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 4, 2019, 6 P.M. TO 9 P.M.

For the second exhibition in the series ‘Matters of Concern | Matières à panser’ – launched at La Verrière, the Brussels art space of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, in April 2019 – curator Guillaume Désanges presents a solo show by French artist Camille Blatrix.
“Sculptures by Camille Blatrix (which the artist terms ‘emotional objects’) resemble strange, industrially manufactured items, improbable artefacts produced by a transgressive techno-capitalist society. His materials of choice (wood, aluminium, glass…) are combined with complex know-how (such as 3D modelling) and worked using factory production methods, though everything here is produced by hand, with obsessive care and craftsmanship. The result is a perfect finish, its cold formality countered by the indicative presence of motifs evoking the artist’s intimate life (a sheet of torn paper, hand-written notes, a flower, tearstains). A little as if their exaggeratedly ‘industrious’ production masked a whole other register of emotional intensity, the better to channel, standardise and dilute it. And so, these sham objects or simulacra – of uncertain purpose, caught between functionality and decoration – drift into the realm of the imagination, dreams, or the surreal.
Does their undeniably seductive, sensual nature resist, or result from, their ‘corporate’ quality? We cannot tell. Around these ambivalent objects, Blatrix’s practice takes a variety of forms: drawing, or marquetry pictures that incorporate figurative motifs, which themselves waver between painterly symbolism, allegory, and graphic communication. The whole builds to create troubling works that play on the tension between design and sculpture, reason and desire, naturalism and artificiality.”

LA VERRIÈRE
BOULEVARD DE WATERLOO 50, BRUSSELS
TUESDAY TO SATURDAY, NOON TO 6P.M.,
ADMISSION FREE
GUIDED VISITS EVERY SATURDAY AT 3P.M.