“Spektrum”, Joël Riff’s fifth exhibition as curator at La Verrière, reveals the paintings of Emmanuelle Castellan. The show fans out across the exhibition space, revealing the unseen, creating backdrops and screens. Constructed as much by addition as by subtraction, her pictorial script superimposes layers and their erasures. Surfaces remain, floating between loose and stretched canvases, whilst their very epidermis has been cut away to better carry the second dimension into the third.

From panel to phantom, from appearance to scale, from filter to memory, the polysemy of the spectrum multiplies access to a gracious production, striving to welcome that which beckons. Mastery is achieved through the freedom to receive. This is evidenced by compositions that allow themselves to be surprised in their latency. A certain passivity allows things to emanate, sometimes slowly, away from any dogmatism.

The hanging allows for an ambitious deployment of the canvases within the volume of the Foundation’s Brussels space, propelling the amplitude of new paintings to an unprecedented scale. Their association with the painters Norbert Schwontkowski (1949-2013) and Walter Swennen (b. 1946) creates a clear filiation, completed by the ceramics of Johannes Nagel (b. 1979), the mirrors of Dagobert Peche (1887-1923) and the words of Muriel Pic (b. 1974). This impetus takes shape outside France – where the artist was born and teaches – and Germany – where she is based. The programme thus resumes its series of first solo presentations in Brussels, giving Emmanuelle Castellan’s painting an unprecedented scope

www.fondationdentreprisehermes.org

La Verrière
Boulevard de Waterloo 50
1000 Brussels (Belgium)
Opening: Wednesday May 15, 2024
from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Exhibition from May 16 to July 27, 2024
Free admission Tuesday to Saturday,
noon to 6 p.m.