L’INCONFORT (2022-2024)

SCULPTURE, INSTALLATION, PERFORMANCE, HAPPENING

Discomfort Part I: Moving Art

(Installation View)

Plaster, wood, paint, wheels

2022

This interdisciplinary project, centered around the concept of discomfort, began in 2022 with the proposal for a solo exhibition at the Renew Art Gallery in Brussels. Since then, it has evolved into various parts (so far four) presented at different exhibitions. The structure of the initial installation mirrors that of a bourgeois salon (with a chaise longue, fireplace, coffee table, and abstract painting), achieved through a series of plaster cushion molds. Now rigid, these cushions serve as modules for a tautological learning game.

This installation is structured around several elements. At the center of the exhibition space stands a chaise longue, mounted on wheels, whose mobility suggests a certain instability in the object. Next to it, a trompe-l'œil fireplace blends into the ensemble, playing with perceptions and blurring the lines between reality and illusion. This visual effect reinforces the idea of a space inhabited by objects that are both familiar and strangely decontextualized.

In the background, the reinterpretation of the famous painting White on White echoes the minimalist aesthetic of the installation. As an essential reference to modern art, this iconic work by Kazimir Malevich, with its geometric simplicity and absence of color, subtly interacts with the rest of the scene, emphasizing the formal purity and apparent emptiness that pervades the space.

The sculptures that punctuate the installation are made from multiple plaster casts, featuring a motif of hardened tufting, evoking textures that are both soft and rigid. This duality between softness and hardness in the material treatment questions the notions of comfort and discomfort, while playing with the tactile and visual perceptions of the viewer. Tufting, typically associated with luxury furniture, is here frozen, transforming an everyday object into a sculpture locked in an ambivalent posture, both welcoming and distant.

The entire installation thus seeks to question our relationship with space and the objects that inhabit it, confronting everyday elements with perceptual and referential shifts.

Discomfort Part II: Coming back home for a gentle simmer."

(Installation views)

Plaster, glass, wood, wheels, coffee, peanuts, sunflower seeds.

2022