Stephan Balleux is a Belgian artist-researcher whose work investigates the very nature of images and their impact on our collective memory. Moving fluidly between painting, drawing, and digital technologies, he explores what he calls an “indecision of matter.” His hybrid forms challenge our perception of reality, creating a sensitive, indefinite skin where traditional craftsmanship meets the digital age.
His current research delves into the “strata” of visual memory, treating artificial intelligence as a vast iconographic reservoir to be translated into organic, sensitive artworks. By blending cinematic references with family archives, Balleux creates an intermediate space where images appear to wear down, revealing psychological depths. His practice functions as a critical exploration of the visible world, constantly questioning how images are born, transformed, and perceived.
The practice of Belgian visual artist Alexandra Leyre Mein is a profound exploration of the intersection between time, matter, and the human form. Her sculptures, described as “observers of our time,” capture a fleeting presence before it fades, transforming raw matter into a living, moving force. Working with plaster, Alexandra engages in an instinctive, physical “dance” with her medium. This self-taught process results in life-sized presences that appear to breathe, creating contemporary vanities that find nobility in the fragile attempt to resist the passage of time.
Beyond sculpture, Alexandra’s multidisciplinary approach encompasses painting, video, and installation. In her paintings, she notably explores the neck—the body’s most vulnerable point where anxiety and silent emotions reside. Using a meditative “glacis” technique to trap light, she captures an unsettling yet magical presence that exists just out of reach. From the skeletal strength of her Mountain Particles to the visceral vulnerability of her Hals series, her work doesn’t hide the cracks or the negatives; instead, it invites us to rediscover the mystery of the other and the “invisible” souls of our cities.
Erica Hinyot is a Belgian painter and AD/graphic designer. “Very young, in Australia, Erica Hinyot who would become plastician and writer is confronted to the rigor of deserts of sand and rocks, tot the immensity of the ocean and its tempests. Like a challenge thrown at these powerful forces from Nature, she has decided to fight back -or to dissolve herself?–by implying her entire body in a conquering artistic act. Storms and deluges are being given a symbolic dimension by
the artist.”
MICHEL VAN LIERDE, collector & art chroniqueur.
The most extreme of our paradoxes will consist in proving that the voices of water are hardly metaphorical, that the language of water is a direct poetic reality, that streams and rivers sound with a strange fidelity the silent landscapes, that the rustling waters teach birds and men to sing, to speak, to say again, and that there is in short continuity between the word of water and the human word. – Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams
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I like to think of my work as an elastic material to be shared, which unfolds through different media, painting, sound and installation. My research focuses on the living and the ephemeral.
In painting, I explore transparency and fluidity. I use water abundantly, as an agent that is both dissolving and revealing. I favour the immediacy of the gesture. My works freeze once they have been made. Water allows me to compose my canvas, which gives the paint a fluid texture and allows the drawing to be free. The painting results from a game between my gesture and the liquid, a process in which this element always has the last word. This method forbids spending more than a few hours on the same work, it invites the execution of quick and precise gestures, always forcing me to a certain form of urgency.
I conjure up an aesthetic of slowness, of drip by drip in gentle immersion. I invite the viewer to observe attentively and listen silently to the work in progress by observing the random movements of a snail, the musical tracking of its trajectory, the flow of water in a river. The slow degradation of the mobilized elements questions our relationship to time and to the living.
Hannah Kircher
1995
Texte in french from Jean-Pierre Müller
“Romain Zacchi défriche, déflore, déchiffre, décore et déchire les déchets, les débris, les rebuts, car, comme on sait, c’est en forgeant que l’on devient bûcheron. Dégaine de cow-boy urbain, gueule affûtée, il s’avance, inconsolablement gai, dans les sombres allées d’une vie en art. En hidalgo de nos désastres post-industriels, noblesse du labeur oblige, il aime avec passion le bois, le métal, la pierre, qui le lui rendent bien.
Bagué d’argent, l’artiste au profil de rapace sème ses pattes de poule, finement ciselées, sur les talus de nos dérives ferrugineuse. Friches industrielles, jeunes ruines déjà si vieilles, voilà l’habitat naturel où notre oiseau rare vient enserrer nos angoisses dans ses griffes. Il chante les certitudes récemment décédées, les bonnes idées juste en désuétude, les savoirs désormais dérisoires, la modernité obsolète. Et convoque ainsi les âmes des faiseurs, de ceux qui ont construit, qui nous ont construits, du tourneur au ferrailleur, du zingueur au photograveur, du tailleur à l’imprimeur.
Au besoin, le volatile se mue en rongeur songeur – en rat d’égout, plus précisément. Le voilà artiste underground : Romain explore les souterrains sans velours qui sont nos ultimes catacombes, les égouts souterrains, couche sous-jacente au dessin des villes. Qu’y trouve-t-il? Du grain à moudre, de l’humble à honorer, du déchet à sanctifier, de l’obscur à illuminer.
Une fois finie la moisson des champs de cloaques et d’usines mortes, Zacchi s’en retourne au temple, au havre, au lieu de vérité – l’atelier. Et là, il cogne sans vergogne, il martèle, il cisèle, lamine et enlumine. Il fait rage sans drame, ferraille les chromes et déraille les trames. Voyez-le fourailler les entrailles, dérouiller la pierraille, dérouler la limaille : l’artiste-mécano- archéologue taille sans faille, il crame et trame, flèche de tout bois, et écrit, avec discipline (de fer), le roman du travail. Le roman de Romain, tout feu tout flamme : « Labeur ». Et l’argent du beurre, le salaire de la peur, le cheval- vapeur et les esprits frappeurs…
Des points de demi-teintes mécaniques agrandis à la main et imprimés en xylographie polychrome ; une fontaine de chrome recyclant elle-même, boucle potentiellement infinie, d’anciens travaux de l’auteur, eux-mêmes reliquats d’accidents de rue ; des haches taillées à la hache, sans hashtags, dans des bastaings de récupération : cette ode au travail, à rebours des lendemains qui chantent, est autant un hommage à la mort qu’un tendre poème à nos dérisoires illusions.
Si Romain grandit le travail, c’est qu’il a grandi en son sein ; une enfance entre imprimerie industrielle et usine de matières plastiques, ça marque, au fer rouge bien sûr. Maintenant, romain comme Vulcain, Zacchi forge son avenir à la flamme de ses rêves, sur l’enclume du réel.
Son sourire n’est pas feint.
Introduction
“The world is a place of constant movement and change”
Thomas’ path to becoming an artist has not been ordinary. After studying philosophy and business sciences, Thomas became an investment banker. In that role he realized how chaotic and unstable the world around him was becoming. To find a way to cope with this instability he dove deeper and deeper into his personal passion for creating visual compositions, using art and photography to convey his ideas and feelings.
Today, Thomas finds his artistic voice in street photography. “Shooting the streets of Brussels in multiple exposure allowed me to work on the notions of time, movement, chaos and uncertainty in a totally new way. By superimposing several shots I tried to convey the feeling that the world is an ever-changing place where everything can happen anytime. Using multiple exposure street photography finally let me express that sense of stress and chaos inherent to the world we live in, much better than I ever could with written or spoken words.”
— Stories & Photos
MULTIPLE EXPOSURE SERIES
Flea Market
