BRUSSELS.- For the second exhibition in the series ‘Matters of Concern | Matières à panser’ – launched at La Verrière, the Brussels art space of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, in April 2019 – curator Guillaume Désanges presents a solo show by French artist Camille Blatrix.

“Sculptures by Camille Blatrix (which the artist terms ‘emotional objects’) resemble strange, industrially manufactured items, improbable artefacts produced by a transgressive techno-capitalist society. His materials of choice (wood, aluminium, glass…) are combined with complex know-how (such as 3D modelling) and worked using factory production methods, though everything here is produced by hand, with obsessive care and craftsmanship. The result is a perfect finish, its cold formality countered by the indicative presence of motifs evoking the artist’s intimate life (a sheet of torn paper, hand-written notes, a flower, tearstains). A little as if their exaggeratedly ‘industrious’ production masked a whole other register of emotional intensity, the better to channel, standardise and dilute it. And so, these sham objects or simulacra – of uncertain purpose, caught between functionality and decoration – drift into the realm of the imagination, dreams, or the surreal. Does their undeniably seductive, sensual nature resist, or result from, their ‘corporate’ quality? We cannot tell. Around these ambivalent objects, Blatrix’s practice takes a variety of forms: drawing, or marquetry pictures that incorporate figurative motifs, which themselves waver between painterly symbolism, allegory, and graphic communication. The whole builds to create troubling works that play on the tension between design and sculpture, reason and desire, naturalism and artificiality.”

‘MATTERS OF CONCERN | MATIÈRES À PANSER’ AT LA VERRIÈRE
Through the ‘Matters of Concern | Matières à panser’ season, Guillaume Désanges marks a conscious return to the material in art, but invested with spiritual, symbolic,
social, therapeutic and magical preoccupations as a critical alternative to the dematerialisation of the prevailing economy. By referencing ‘other’ practices and ways of thinking at the heart of contemporary society, and outside it, the season offers an in-depth examination of the modes of mindfulness and curiosity that are subtly subverting the established categories of contemporary art.

‘Matters of Concern | Matières à panser’ is the third season of themed exhibitions at La Verrière, after ‘Gestures, and thought’ (2013-16) and ‘Ballistic Poetry’ (2016-19).

Camille Blatrix was born in Paris in 1984. He lives and works in Brussels. Camille Blatrix trained at the Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (ENSBA). His sculptures evoke artefacts from a not-too-distant future, echoing the forms of everyday objects, freed from their conventional uses. They resemble industrially manufactured machines or devices but are in fact hand-made by the artist, testifying to his significant mastery of ‘traditional’ techniques: woodwork, glass making, aluminium, marquetry and more. Camille Blatrix was awarded the Prix Fondation d’entreprise Ricard and the Prix des Amis des Beaux-Arts de Paris, in 2014.

Selected recent solo and group exhibitions
In recent years, Camille Blatrix’s work has featured in solo and group exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (L’ennemi de mon ennemi), the Hessel Museum of Art – CCS Bard Galleries (Annandale-on-Hudson), the MRAC in Sérignan, Lafayette Anticipations (Paris), Taylor Macklin (Zurich) in 2018, and at Galerie Balice Hertling (Paris) in 2017, and CCA Wattis (San Francisco) in 2016. Camille Blatrix was a participant in the 2016 Rennes Biennale and the 2015 Lyon Biennale.

The Fondation d’entreprise Hermès presented his work in the inaugural group exhibition for ‘Matters of Concern | Matières à panser’ at La Verrière (Brussels), in spring 2019.