L’art de rien

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