CONSTRUCTIONS - DE-CONSTRUCTIONS

An exhibition featuring monumental abstract paintings in acrylic paint by Hans Soenen and collages/montages by Sabine Blanchard.

Both artists engage in dialogue through their contemporary works, letting the viewer into their world of minimalism, geometric abstraction, sometimes referencing to ethnic forms and pared-down sophistication in material and use of colour. Working on pure linen by H. Soenen or composing with industrial materials by S. Blanchard. Above all, their art brings a powerful positive and visual message to the viewer.

For four decades and with 30 exhibitions in Belgium and abroad to his credit, this artist has been a fixed value on the art scene. After his studies, he emerged as a gifted figurative draughtsman and painter with a passion for luminism. Over the last decade, his work evolved from suggestive to fully abstract.

In CONSTRUCTIONS, this artist-designer passionate by art and design, brings balanced compositions on monumental canvases of beautiful linen. The pure linen is part of the work. The colours, compositions and materials merge into one. In his work, we see the balance between ratio and emotion, dynamism and tautness, colouristic and monochrome, spontaneity and control. All this results in timeless compositions in a purified colour palette.

Sabine Blanchard is a French ‘polyartist’ of Flemish origin. From her various expatriations and her passion for ethnology, she shares an uninhibited eye for everyday objects, from which she draws her pictorial material. She believes that ‘ everything already exists, there's no need to create new forms’. She decided to reinterpret anonymous, modest industrial products graphically, in order to awaken their visual potential, over and above their already familiar functionality. Inspired by  Architecture she studied at Saint Luc in Tournai, she uses screws, puzzles, brooms, hoops and kettledrums with extreme rigour. Each work is elaborated like the façade of a building, punctuated by solids and voids, exposed to the constant play of daylight. Her 3D compositions are elaborated, woven and sculpted until the balance is perfect. She has made this her philosophical quest.

With the exhibition Dé-Construction, it's the electric cable that is contorted with precision. Gentle formal allegories engage the viewer. From near and far, we wonder about the boundary between reality and illusion. Cast shadows are the order of the day. Colours intermingle, where other monochrome narratives honour the industrial material in its rawest expression. It's never a question of ‘recycling’, but of deliberately re-enchanting, in a world where consumerism overwhelms the eye and curbs the desire to settle down. 
The artist proposes a pause on the image to celebrate the ‘simple beautiful’. In her personal and resolutely optimistic stroll, she offers a poetic timelessness to our so-called ‘everyday objects’...