De la matière

Responding to the call from ODRADEK, constantly on the lookout for new connections, Christine Nicaise and Fabienne Claesen confide in us their coalition with matter.

Either by letting acrylic and oil reveal their affinities, or by clay meeting the texture of wood, the two artists show us matter in power and in action. This material acts on our sensibilities, touching us and affecting us without imposing a direction on us. Rather, the elements at work place us in the midst of a transaction between humans and substances brought to life.

Both Christine Nicaise and Fabienne Claesen are concerned with the interdependence between the materials they transform and the gestures they apply to them. Literally and figuratively, they compose, in other words, they negotiate alliances with their associates in paint and clay in order to give their work a sense of interiority.

Refusing to accept rigid supports or any other constraints, Christine Nicaise does not attach her canvases to stretchers, preferring to leave them to their own tension.

The large-format floor paintings are made up of various signs that the artist associates with the canvas. More graffiti than writing, the incised or glued traces become matter, the flesh of colour, life on the surface of the skin.

Christine Nicaise lets time work in her favour, because after the layers of acrylic comes the drying period for the layers of oil, which readjusts the superimposition of signs or gestures that are still on the move or still in charge.

Fabienne Claesen works with earth and wood. For her, it’s a question of borrowing these fundamental constituents from nature and combining them with a human gesture. A strange traffic, like a sleight of hand, is produced between the hands in accordance with the artist’s spirit and the texture of the material encountered and liberated.

Mounted on wooden panels, fingerprints appear in successive marks. The pressure of fingerprints tells a story. The words of the finger inscribed in the loose earth are revealed in a repetitive dynamic. With Fabienne Claesen, the thumb is inscribed in the earth in a linear and rhythmic way, until a mixed skin-earth texture is obtained.

In another way, the artist erects half-human, half-arboreal forms vertically, reminding us that the skin remains this in-between, man-world.

Christine Nicaise and Fabienne Claesen, these emancipated artists, share a spirited exchange of energy between the poles of nature and culture.

Simone Schuiten