Maren Dubnick

ACCUMULATOR

From to

CENTRALE | vitrine

CENTRALE presents Maren Dubnick’s exhibition ACCUMULATOR at CENTRALE | vitrine (04.04 > 01.09.2024).

At a time when CENTRALE is undergoing a major transformation of its exhibition and public spaces, and reaffirming its new identity, Maren Dubnick (visual artist) and Clémentine Davin (curator) are reactivating the original function of the site, with the aim of offering a social and historical insight into the art centre which was once the first power station of the City of Brussels. Through an installation in CENTRALE | vitrine, the duo takes a look at the evolving use of electricity and its impact on contemporary society, creating a metaphorical link between the past and future lives of CENTRALE.

The artist-curator duo

Maren Dubnick, visual artist & Clémentine Davin, art historian and art critic, met in Brussels in 2018. Since then, they have been working together on a regular basis to develop their respective projects, and more specifically on issues relating to mediation and the place of art in society. They share many common concerns, but above all they share a keen interest in collaborative artistic approaches that aim to democratise art. In 2021, they are working together on a residency-laboratory project entitled “Axis-Mundi de l’ancrage au Monde”, supported by the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles as part of its call for projects Un Futur pour la Culture 2021-22.

Maren DUBNICK (°1972, BE/DE) uses stacking and coiling strategies to question our relationship with time. Like a representation of infinity, her practice is based on a repetitive, even meditative process that requires both mastery and patience.

Clémentine DAVIN (°1985, FR) has worked alongside artists for many years, taking an active part in their exhibitions and projects. She is also a regular contributor to the art magazines l’art même and Flux News and, since 2022, has been a member of the board of the Fédération des Arts Plastiques (FAP).

 

With the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

 

Exposition

CENTRALE | vitrine
Rue Sainte-Catherine 13
1000 Brussels

Visible day & night

7 days left
before the exhibition’s opening

Artist

Curator

  • Clémentine DAVIN

Antoinette d’Ansembourg

"From the ground, with love"

From to

CENTRALE | vitrine

CENTRALE presents Antoinette d’Ansembourg‘s exhibition “From the ground, with love” at CENTRALE | vitrine (23.11.2023 > 17.03.2024).

Antoinette d’Ansembourg’s draws the timeless strangeness that emanates from her installations from the territory of the city, where new building sites blossom daily, ripping open buildings and excavating streets to expose the overhead or underground networks of cables that supply it with their fluids or electrical flows like a living being. In these areas off-limits to the public and of uncertain temporality, she notes the connections between rubble and plants that have the capacity to grow in hostile environments. She is sensitive to these changes in the nature of beings and things, to their transgenic potential. A “confrontation between human construction and the development of nature” is questioned by the artist in the very construction of her installations, where unspeakable mutations are forged and unnatural organisms are born, resulting from the improbable combination of the living and the waste.

With the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

 

Photo © Harold Lechien

Exposition

CENTRALE | vitrine
Rue Sainte-Catherine 13
1000 Brussels

Visible day & night

Curator

  • Tania NASIELSKI

Sofhie Mavroudis

A bread in the wall

From to

CENTRALE | box

Sofhie Mavroudis presents the exhibition A bread in the wall at CENTRALE | box (23.11.2023 > 17.03.2024).

The artist questions the notion of transmission, particularly through language and traditions.

Starting from an incomplete knowledge of her father’s language, she uses gesture as the initiator of a change of state and confers – on the various objects thus created – a symbolism of their own.

Starting with a book written in Greek, the artist erases the words she does not understand. She seeks a creative process that allows the transformation of this object, which has lost its primary role of transmitting history, into a process close to resilience.

Laureate CENTRALE for contemporary art – Carte de Visite ARTopenKUNST 2021

With the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

Exposition

CENTRALE | box
Place Sainte-Catherine 44
1000 Brussels
WED > SUN 10:30 > 18:00

TICKETS
0 €

L’art de rien

From to

CENTRALE | hall

CENTRALE presents the group exhibition L’art de rien (23.11.2023 > 17.03.2024).

The group exhibition L’art de rien brings together artists, mostly from Brussels, who share a talent for the smallest gesture and a predilection for humble materials: for aesthetic and poetic purposes, they reuse and divert poor materials or restore dignity to ordinary, everyday objects – those that are discarded, once consumed, in the household chaos of the modern world. This selection of guest artists is completed – with humour and poetry – by a choice of works drawn from the collection of François de Coninck as well as from the formidable cabinet of contemporary curiosities of Galila Barzilaï Hollander, whose sensitive passion for the incongruous object is well known, with an emphasis on international artists.

” Works made from almost nothing touch me deeply. From Picasso’s bull’s head made of handlebars and a bicycle saddle to the fragile and poetic productions of Arte Povera, everything enchants me when poverty rhymes with generosity. Everything surprises me, questions me, amuses me and seduces me in this economy of means in the service of an artistic gesture. What makes your eyes smile makes you think. And it only takes a little to move and thus renew the way we look at things. Today, I am all the more sensitive to the poetics of the smallest gesture as current art seems to me to be marked, like other fields of production and consumption, by the proliferation of materials and expensive technological means, unfortunately often intended to impress the gallery. In contrast, the formal simplicity of works born of almost nothing gives added meaning, and beauty, to their tiny presence in this glitzy world.” – François de Coninck, guest curator

 

With the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

Exposition

CENTRALE | hall
Place Sainte-Catherine 44
1000 Brussels
WED > SUN 10:30 > 18:00

TICKETS
€10,00 // €6,00 // €4,00 // €2,50 // €1,25 // €0

First Sunday of the month at 11.30 am : guided tour offered with the entrance ticket

Antoine Waterkeyn

Sapristi, Sorcellerie et saint Sacrilège

From to

CENTRALE | vitrine

Antoine Waterkeyn‘s artistic practice manifests itself in the perpetual writing and rewriting of plots and narrative constructions. He plays with archetypes and characters from famous novels or from our collective memory. In his works, the narrative is deliberately left open to interpretation.

For his exhibition at CENTRALE | vitrine, Antoine Waterkeyn presents an installation of larger-than-life painted figures. The artist is inspired by the character of the monstrous figure in Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog and the Court of Miracles (La Cour des miracles) in Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris. Based on these stories, Waterkeyn imagines a Eurovision competition for intellectuals, bringing together the winners of an atypical, little-awarded category: a collection of anti-heroes and villains from popular culture.

The artist takes us back to the marginalized figures of the Court of Miracles in the Middle Ages: beggars, hoodlums, vagabonds posing as cripples in the streets of Paris to deceive passers-by. As if by a miracle, at nightfall, they suddenly start walking normally, or regain their sight or the use of their limbs.

By gathering these iconic characters, Antoine Waterkeyn pays tribute to the anti-heroes of his collection. In this way, the artist holds up an inverted mirror of today’s dominant society to the passers-by of the Sainte-Catherine Street.

 

― Where am I? cried the affrighted poet.

― In the Cour des Miracles, replied a fourth spectre. who had joined them.

― Miracles, upon my soul, rejoined Gringoin, for here are blind who see and lame who run.

A sinister laugh was their only answer.

The poor poet cast his eyes around him. He was actually in that dreaded Cour des Miracles, into which no honest man had ever penetrated at such an hour; a magic circle, in which the officers of the Chatelet and the sergeants of the provost who ventured within it were disposed of in a trice; the haunt of thieves; a hideous wen on the face of Paris; a sewer disgorging every morning and receiving every night that fetid torrent of vice, mendicity, and roguery which always overflows the streets of great capitals;

a monstrous hive to which all the drones of the social order retired at night with their booty; the hospital of imposture where the gypsy, the unfrocked monk, the ruined scholar, the blackguards of all nations, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, of all religions, Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, idolaters, covered with painted wounds, beggars by day, transmogrified themselves into banditti at night; immense robing-room, in short, whither all the actors of that eternal comedy which theft, prostitution, and murder are performing in the streets of Paris, resorted at that period to dress and undress.

Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), extract

Exposition

CENTRALE | vitrine
Rue Sainte-Catherine 13
1000 Brussels

Visible day & night

Curator

  • Tania NASIELSKI

Robberto & Milena Atzori

LA FOULE

From to

CENTRALE | vitrine

Vue d'exposition Robberto & Milena Atzori, LA FOULE, 2023 (c) Photo : Philippe de Gobert

Robberto & Milena Atzori present LA FOULE at CENTRALE | vitrine (16.03 > 11.06.2023). Multidisciplinary artists Robberto & Milena have been working as a duo since 2017. Their work blends painting and sculpture with textile art and embroidery. They question the relationship between society and individual obsessions.

The artist duo collaborates in a creative process where both are contaminated by one another. They explore the shifting forces between religion and magic, esotericism and instinct, and wakefulness and sleep.

For their exhibition at CENTRALE | vitrine, Robberto & Milena Atzori propose LA FOULE, populated by polymorphous creatures made entirely of stuffed fabrics covered by watercolours and embroidery. Their almost human-sized dimensions echo the bodies of their audience. The assembly of coloured sculptures underlines not only the plurality of bodies, but also the weakness of the notion of identity. By questioning what we define as “normal”, Robberto & Milena Atzori wish to submit this crowd to the gaze of passers-by on St Catherine Street, revealing the illusion of the immutable character of individual identity.

The vitrine displays a multitude of creatures crammed in the space facing the passers-by on St Catherine Street. Despite the use of colours that evoke harmony, the installation addresses the fear of being confined, crammed into an uncomfortable promiscuity. Between a feeling of unease and a need for contact, LA FOULE looks at the ambivalence of our relationship with otherness.

 

With the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

Exposition

CENTRALE | vitrine
Rue Sainte-Catherine 13
1000 Brussels

Visible day & night

Curator

  • Tania NASIELSKI

Mehdi-Georges Lahlou – Candice Breitz

extra

From to

CENTRALE | hall

Vue de l'exposition d'extra

CENTRALE presents the exhibition extra by Mehdi-Georges Lahlou & Candice Breitz at CENTRALE | hall (20.04 > 24.09.2023).

For this exhibition, envisaged as a space of celebration and encounters, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou presents a whole new body of works including sculptures, drawings, engravings, reworked archive photos, as well as installations and videos. At CENTRALE, the artist continues to explore the representation of violence and its consequences on current geopolitical issues. He draws on war archives and ancestral history, as well as on his own experiences, both intimate and fictional. Between the representation of the self and the questioning of the other, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou seeks to understand the role of archives in our collective memory.

“As an artist, I have the privilege of being able to speak out. I want to take advantage of this, to open up the senses and consciences. “ – Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, interviewed by Annick Colonna-Césari, journalist and critic

Mehdi-Georges Lahlou has invited the Berlin-based artist Candice Breitz (1972, Johannesburg) as a guest artist. Born and raised in South Africa during the era of apartheid, Breitz has consistently sought to grapple with whiteness in her work, from early photographic series such as ‘Ghost Series’ (1994), to later installations such as ‘Extra’ (2011) and ‘Whiteface’ (2022). Breitz’s journeys into the violent terrain of whiteness often feature the artist herself and are strikingly auto-ethnographic, offering a compelling counterpoint to Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s body of work, in which self-portraiture again and again opens onto some of the most urgent political conversations of our times.

The two artists work with (self-)portraits, as well as with images taken from the media and from popular or ancestral/traditional cultures.

They examine the way in which identity and image are shaped and echo each other, whether within the local and familial microcosm, or within the wider national and international macrocosm.

The exhibition opens up beyond the museum walls with the unveiling of a monumental artwork by Mehdi-Georges Lahlou in Molenbeek at the Vaartkapoen Cultural Centre. Entitled Into the Palms the Birds, it was commissioned by the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (Flemish Community Commission).

Mehdi-Georges Lahlou (1983, Sables d’Olonne, France; lives and works in Brussels and Paris) is a multidisciplinary artist exploring performance art, installations, sculpture, photography, drawing. The artist’s interest lies in the way in which emotions can be triggered by the subject, rather than in the object itself. His work calls upon the five senses as it includes sound creations, spices, and even food items such as couscous. Each element refers to a culture, a cliché, a ritual tradition, thus echoing the world we live in.

 

With the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

Exposition

CENTRALE | hall
Place Sainte-Catherine 44
1000 Brussels
WED > SUN 10:30 > 18:00

Closed on 09.06.2023

TICKETS
8,00 € // 4,00 € // 2,50 € // 1,25 € // 0 €

First Sunday of the month at 11.30 am : guided tour offered with the entrance ticket

Curator

  • Tania NASIELSKI

Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard

Le spectacle

From to

CENTRALE | box

Angélique Aubrit and Ludovic Beillard present the exhibition Le spectacle at CENTRALE | box (20.04 > 24.09.2023).

Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard make dolls, costumes, and sets that they use to tackle situations which feel absurd or painful. They have a shared interest in commedia dell’arte (the 16th century Italian theatrical genre), as well as in grotesque, burlesque, or science-fiction films. The artists shoot videos where characters are depicted in situations of desperation. The dolls’ wooden heads, hands, and feet appear to constrain their gestures and weigh down their casual attitude. Their inanimate faces devoid of expression convey a sense of uncanniness.

The exhibition Le spectacle brings together several series of dolls, whose stories are intertwined inside a set made of wallpaper.

Laureates of the City of Brussels > Médiatine Prize 2022

 

With the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

Exposition

CENTRALE | box
Place Sainte-Catherine 44
1000 Brussels
WED > SUN 10:30 > 18:00

Closed on 09.06.2023

TICKETS
0 €

Curator

  • Tania NASIELSKI

Yannick Ganseman

Wolken boven Brussel (Nuages)

From to

CENTRALE | lab

Since 2008, Yannick Ganseman’s work has consisted of private scenes, still lifes, portraits and landscapes in oil paint and ceramics, mixing sculpture and painting. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in Flanders, the Netherlands and Japan.

Wolken boven Brussel (Nuages) is his first solo exhibition in Brussels. For CENTRALE | lab, he is challenging himself to produce new works by transposing the context of the Place Sainte-Catherine undergoing construction works.   

The artist will produce a series of large bas-reliefs throughout the exhibition with the intention of linking the outdoor space with CENTRALE | lab. The bas-reliefs will be made of wood, plaster, PU foam and polystyrene. They will be moved to the outside of the lab and thus subjected to the alterations of the weather and to the possible interventions of passers-by. The work process will be visible, with the artist working in the exhibition space. He will be available to meet the visitors.  

This project at the lab is the first step in the creation of a work for public space, representing the clouds and the stormy sky of Brussels. 

Yannick Ganseman (1984, lives and works in Brussels) studied at the Academy of Leuven in Sculpture 2002-2003 and in Drawing 2003-2009. He also studied Art History at the VUB in Brussels from 2015 to 2016. His works have been shown in institutions and galleries in Belgium, in France and in Germany. He is represented by OttyPark Gallery, Antwerp. 

 

With the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

Exposition

CENTRALE | lab
Place Sainte-Catherine 16
1000 Brussels
WED > SUN 10:30 > 13:00 – 13:30 > 18:00

Closed on 09.06.2023

TICKETS
0 €

Curator

  • Tania NASIELSKI

Charlotte Beaudry

StandUp

From to

Extra Muros

06 > 09.10.2022
12:00 > 19:00

Invited by CENTRALE for contemporary art, Charlotte Beaudry intervenes at the occasion of the Brussels Drawing week on the walls of the Vanderborght space, continuing her project StandUp.
A project in development by the artist since 2019, StandUp invites young Brussels-based women to take their place in the public space.

The appropriation and organisation of public space with, by and for women remains a major societal issue in Belgium and throughout the world. Although more and more legal measures are being taken, they remain complex to apply and still marginal. A recent study showed that in France, 94% of street names were dedicated to men. The situation is much the same in Belgium.

StandUp presents female silhouettes evoking adolescence. Isolated, oversized and out of context, they question the posture as an expression of the self. Assertive, they bring to mind resistance and taking a stand.

Evoking as much a homage as the manifestation of a tension ready to explode, Coeur de pavés (Heart of Cobblestones) brings together actresses, authors, visual artists, musicians, philosophers, all of them resistance figures and feminists.

Brussels Drawing Week celebrates the vitality and diversity of drawing through a rich and varied programme in the heart of Brussels.

Launched in the framework of the Art on Paper fair, in dialogue with leading institutions, art centres and art schools in Brussels, Brussels Drawing Week enables a very large Brussels-based audience – as well as national and international – to (re)discover drawing, its history, its actors and its practices during an intense week of programming.

From 3 to 9 October, Brussels Drawing Week brings together various events such as guided tours, workshops, conferences, meetings, exhibitions and performances.

Exposition

VANDERBORGHT Building
Rue de l’écuyer 50
1000 Brussels

Curator

  • Tania NASIELSKI