Beverly BAKER - Latitude Artist, États-Unis
Artiste américaine (Latitude Artist, Kentucky), Beverly Baker travaille au départ de documents administratifs qu’elle subtilise sur son lieu de travail ou au départ de pages arrachées à des magazines et à des livres. Ce support initial est ensuite couvert par de multiples couches de lettres, de mots et de lignes de couleurs.
Avec la fréquentation des ateliers, la production de Beverly Baker s’émancipe progressivement du texte pour devenir plus graphique. Les œuvres exposées ici en attestent. Nous sommes face à de quasi tapisseries dont l’intensité tranche avec la sobriété des moyens. Car, quoi qu’il en soit de l’évolution de son travail, Beverly Baker recourt toujours aux mêmes modestes instruments : stylo à bille, crayon ou marqueur.
Géraldine BEAUPèRE - Créahm Région wallonne, Belgique
Fréquentant les ateliers du Créahm depuis plus de quinze ans, Géraldine Beaupère crée en noir et blanc de magnifiques réinterprétations de livres illustrés. Les textes autant que les images sont soumis au travail de copie et de détournement de Géraldine Beaupère.
Les œuvres exposées ici appartiennent à un registre de création plus ancien, l’artiste se préoccupant aujourd’hui davantage de la nature et de sa préservation.
Samuel Cariaux - Créahm Région Wallonne, Belgique
Musician, Circassian artist, dancer and plastic artist, Samuel Cariaux is a “complete” artist who has regularly visited the Créahm workshops in Liège.
Strongly influenced by Japan - Samourai, calligraphy, sushi and Manga - Samuel Cariaux also draws his influence from the most sensual photography from adverts.
At the Trinkhall from January 2023, Samuel Cariaux has taken up a new form of expression: etching. Some of these kind of creations are on show here.
Sylvain COSIJNS - De Bolster, Belgique
Sylvain Cosijns (1932-2020) entre à l’atelier artistique du centre De Bolster (Mariaheem, à l’époque) à l’âge de cinquante-quatre ans. Avec le soutien de l’animateur Jan Geldhof, le talent artistique de Sylvain Cosijns s’épanouit peu à peu. L’artiste affirme son style : ses personnages sont de plus en plus stylisés au fur et à mesure qu’il épure son trait.
Michel DAVE - La Pommeraie, Belgique
Michel Dave (1941-2018) intègre les ateliers de La Pommeraie alors qu’il est âgé de cinquante ans.
L’artiste trace les mots comme l’on dessine, répétant en une colonne démultipliée sur la page le même mot ou la même phrase – l’un ou l’autre cerclé d’une sorte de bulle ou de pointillés. Les créations de Michel Dave sont, pour la plupart, réalisées au marqueur acrylique de couleur. Les œuvres exposées ici, si elles répondent au même canevas créatif, diffèrent néanmoins par la technique utilisée : la gravure.
André DELVIGNE
Représenté par la Fondation Paul Duhem, le plasticien et photographe André Delvigne anime des ateliers d’art-thérapie.
Le Bureau du boss est un mausolée païen érigé à la gloire de l’artiste par lui-même. C’est un agrégat de traces, autant rebuts que reliques de moments heureux ou souffrants : les alliances d’unions aujourd’hui dissoutes, une balle qui a manqué sa cible de peu, un autoportrait, de l’eau bénite, des chapelets, une carte de tarot et des montres à gousset qui ont cessé, depuis longtemps, d’égrener les minutes ou les heures.
Pierre De Peet - Créahmbxl, Belgium
Pierre De Peet (1929-2019) was one of the leading artists from the CréahmBxl workshops, where he worked for almost thirty years from August 1990 until he passed away in November 2019. From quite a modest background, his poor health ensured that schools were inaccessible to him early on. As he explains in his autobiography, he helped out in the fields and then joined his brother in the family bakery, where he was a labourer for several years. In August 1990, at the age of 60, he joined the Créahm workshops. There, he gradually developed an overwhelmingly intense fine art body of work: drawings, paintings and etchings. Perfectly clear strokes, an intelligent use of colour, an innate sense of narration and an incomparable and outstanding use of poetry were the main elements of a pictorial form of language or expressionism, sometimes with his most tragic dimensions, which he continuously conversed with a kind of softness and tenderness never seen before. Pierre De Peet’s view of the world was both uncompromising and extremely indulgent. He leafed through magazines and art books, images of constellations, emotions and events, the thread of an elected chronicle of the nature of life, at its best and, occasionally, at its worst, people and the body seized by the nudity of existence, taking us back imperceptibly, to our own pain and our own hopes.
Robert DE ZAEYTIDJT - Créahmbxl, Belgique
Robert De Zaeytijdt (1929-1999) fréquente les ateliers arts plastiques du Créahm à Bruxelles de 1984 à 1998. Sur une période relativement brève, il a réalisé une œuvre abstraite et puissamment poétique. L’artiste use de médiums privilégiés comme l’écoline et l’acrylique pour appliquer de larges aplats de couleur sur le papier. Ces zones sont toujours rehaussées d’une subtile ponctuation idéographique presque mathématique, à l’encre de Chine ou au pastel, dont la graphie évoque les partitions musicales. S’il limite l’utilisation des couleurs jusqu’à l’épurement, Robert De Zaeytijdt est aussi un coloriste talentueux. De cette subtile combinaison surgit le doute, que l’artiste laisse planer sur ses intentions. L’interprétation n’en est que plus profonde et l’on peut imaginer de ces compositions qu’elles suggèrent un paysage ou un portrait. Ou bien sont-elles une forme d’expression calligraphique délicatement mystérieuse, dont le code aurait été gardé secret par l’artiste ?
Deux mondes se superposent, cohabitent et se complètent dans l’œuvre de Robert De Zaeytijdt : la brume d’une intimité et les accents de la vie qui racontent ses anicroches ou ses légèretés. Une création artistique qui nous renvoie définitivement à nos propres fragilités.
Aymeric Dodeigne - Créahm Région Wallonne, Belgique
Aymeric Dodeigne has only been visiting the Chréahm Liège workshops for a short time. A fantastic all-rounder, he readily joins in collective projects and likes to rise to new challenges.
In January 2023, he joined the etching workshop at the Trinkhall Museum, thus enriching his creation of new patterns.
Michel DUPONT - Club André Baillon, Belgique
Michel Dupont (1945-2010) a fréquenté l’atelier arts plastiques du Club André Baillon pendant quelques années.
Très imprégné par ses connaissances en ingénierie, l’artiste puise dans les manuels d’électromécanique la source de son inspiration, transfigurant schémas et équations sur de grands fonds colorés.
Johan Geenens - Ateliers De Zandberg, Belgique
Born in 1970, Johan Geenens has regularly visited the De Zandberg workshops since 2002.
A member of the Wild Classical Music Ensemble, Johan Geenens is also, maybe above all, the creator of major plastic works and now enjoys wide recognition.
His work - etchings, drawings and paintings - seems to indicate great restraint, of course through its contents, but also through the choice of extremely simple, even frugal materials. Johan Geenens’s creations are long haul, mobilizing the artist for weeks. The result is breathtaking, particularly the acrylics which portray the necessity of artistic creation.
Jean-Marie Heyligen - Home André Livémont, Belgium
Jean-Marie Heyligen (Ath, Belgium, 1961) is a plural-form artist: painter, etcher, sculptor. For over forty years, with endless patience, he has played the role of talking about important things in a way that is beyond words – stunned faces, abandoned and naked bodies, Indians from another world, knights from another time, all drawn into the irresolute enigma of shapes, strokes, materials, colours, images and things. The long-lasting theme of Jean-Marie Heyligen’s work is organised knick-knacks, constantly metamorphosing due to everything we secretly go through from childhood to adulthood.
Alexis Lippstreu - La Pommeraie, Belgique
Alexis Lippstreu (Suresnes, 1972) regularly visits the Fine Arts workshop at La Pommeraie.
With limited materials - pencil, paper - Alexis Lippstreu creates fantastic copies of the paintings of the masters. Gauguin’s, Manet’s or Velasquez’s scenes are reinterpreted, reinvented within infinite series. Each drawing is a variation on the main theme, endless, always taking over and adding more to the craft. Whether a reworking or a new page of the history of art, Alexis Lippstreu’s work cuts to the bone with great restraint and art consumed by starkness, revealing the heart of the most famous paintings.
With almost hypnotic reiteration, Alexis Lippstreu’s work also acts as an invitation to contemplate the workshop relationships between the artists and the person referred to as “the team leader.” What is possible at the workshop and what is forbidden? What happens when a certain book devoted to a certain artist disappears and, along with it, one of the main sources of inspiration? What path or enclosure do pastels draw when replaced by lead pencil?
“Naturally, Alexis has not had any artistic education; he had no urgency to create.
When he arrived at La Pommeraie, he found out about my workshop and came along. All his graphic elements were in place. I wouldn’t want to downplay my role, but other than providing him with the materials, being within eyesight, he doesn’t need anything. If I’m not around, it really bothers him; it’s unnecessary to describe the particular relationship that has developed between us over the years. His creativity didn’t surface in secret, silence and solitude; he functions within a workshop around other people and I have a real presence, that I hope is in no way humiliating. On a daily basis, he is in the company of colleagues who motivate and encourage him. Alexis is able to take a step back from our world and put himself in his own bubble where time - our time - no longer exists. These are the magic moments that he repeats every day. There is a whole vocabulary that he doesn’t know: artist-œuvre-gallery-museum... On the other hand, whether or not he pays much interest in his exhibitions, the travel, previews and restaurant surrounding them are completely fundamental and he remembers every detail of his experiences for many years to come. Of course he has no interest in money whatsoever; he doesn’t know its value and it’s certainly not the driving force of his creativity. Nor is he interested in the future of his work […] He never considers its future and, when he finishes a drawing, he puts it away on the shelf and immediately forgets about it. I even think that we could throw it away and it would have no effect on him. My current role is to protect, catalog and circulate his work.” (Excerpt from Bruno Gérard’s, “Alexis Lippstreu. Gauguin, Degas, Leonardo de Vinci and co…” Alexis Lippstreu, Liège, MADmusée-Créahm Région Wallonne, 2012, p. 11-12.)
Ronny MacKenzie - Project Ability, United kingdom
Ronny MacKenzie regularly attended the Project Ability artistic workshop (Glasgow) when he produced the piece showcased at the Trinkhall Museum. We currently have no information about this artist.
Alain Meert - Créahm Région Wallonne, Belgium
As an active participant of the Créahm Liège workshops since 1996, Alain Meert has given the Trinkhall Museum one of his emblematic pieces: Le musée idéal (2019). His artworks are a central part of a pirate ship set up on the Museum’s grand floor, just as much as the people and projects important to the artist. This piece presents itself as a metaphor of our museum policy.
Alain Meert is also an incredible copyist. Reproductions of animals or still life are transformed by his hands. The Places to Exist exhibition mainly draws on this side of his work. In comparison with De Gelas’s Polaroids, Alain Meert’s creations recount the precariousness of our existence with incredible power, as much as its density and extensive complexity.
Alain Meert is one of the three Créahm Région Wallonne artists to join the etching workshop in January 2023. Gradually finding his rhythm and nailing down his style - on zinc, or plastic - Alain Meert is exhibiting a series of portraits.
Le musée idéal d’Alain Meert
The ideal museum is a work created throughout 2019 by one of the leading artists of the Créahm workshops, Alain Meert, in preparation for the opening of the Trink-Hall. The artist answered the question addressed to him - What is a museum? -by means of a sumptuous boat, all sails outside, where nonchalantly drawings, paintings and sculptures are exhibited. It is a theatre of papers, cardboards, objects, multiplied, unusual and familiar presences that fit exactly in between consciences. The whole world that fits in a boat: Alain Meert's ark. And it is a museum, as we want it to be, that navigates by dreaming among ideas, shapes and emotions. Captain (Navy), Alain Meert is a pirate. May we, at the Trink-Hall, let ourselves be led by its thousand ports and its ho ho ho!
Bertha Otoya - Atelier Creativity Explored, USA
Born in Peru, Bertha Otoya regularly attends the American workshop, Creativity Explored.
At the beginning, she devoted herself to textile work, making tapestries and kilts according to traditional Peruvian methods. From 2009 onwards, her work took another path: at this point, Bertha Otoya turned her attention to painting, mostly in black and white. Gradually, etchings became a more important part of her creations: snakes, fish and mysterious creatures popped up on the front of manuscripts; copies of various works ranging from pacts with the devil to Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Three of Bertha Otoya’s pieces are showcased in Places to Exist. Otoya’s creatures slide into place, leading us to a wonderful universe or occasionally worrying depths.
Pascal Tassini - CRÉAHM RÉGION WALLONNE, BELGIQUE
Born in Ans in 1955, Pascal Tassini is a plastic artist with a mental disability. Active for more than twenty years in the workshops of the Créahm Région Wallonne, his work is now recognized worldwide. Among his many achievements: a hut, emblem of his work. Built within the studio where he works, the Cabane is particularly important in the artist's creative process. It is composed of the very material that has made Pascal Tassini's work so special - and renowned -: recycled materials intertwined with each other by means of textile pieces tied together. Located in the heart of the workshop, the hut offers a refuge in Tassini; it is the place that authorizes creation and houses the finished works. It is so emblematic of her work that in 2003, during the monographic exhibition dedicated to her by the MAD, the artist created a variation of the cabin within the walls of the museum. And in 2017, when he exhibited at the Christian Berst Gallery in Paris, Pascal Tassini displayed on the wall a large photographic reproduction of this extraordinary architectural achievement. The Cabin not only occupies a central place in the artist's work, but also represents a major piece of recent art history.
Pascale Vincke - Créahmbxl, Belgique
A workshop artist at the Créahm in Brussels, from 1986 to 1998, Pascale Vincke’s plastic art activity is mature, intense and brief. Her work largely consists of portraits inspired by magazine pages and adverts. Pascale Vincke uses her painting to twist and transform this glitzy and sparkly world; it breaks free of itself.
“See how the image communicates with the actual edges of the figure within - she messes around with it and literally plays with the frame. Free of affectation, delicately, the interplay of the image and the frame points to the conditions of visible possibility: The image is constantly under the threat of extinction or, in better terms, it seems to be permanently inhabited by a hesitation of existence, an escapist project, simultaneously maintaining its own visibility, the slice of silence and darkness of which it consists and paradoxically makes possible, the silence from which it is born. This is why, without any doubt, it escapes from its origins and guidance through the rituals of demonstration, commerce, inner elation: it stretches towards its edge and also predicates its own appearance.. It has never turned to the inside, it opens up to the troublesome and vast bareness of the outside.” (Excerpt from Carl Havelange, “Les portraits de Pascale Vincke : une anthropologie silencieuse,” Pascale Vincke, Liège, MADmusée-Créahm Région Wallonne, 2006, p. 34.)