BRUSSELS.- To open the new year 2025, the Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach’s museale nave has been transformed into an Enchanted Forest with a unique installation by Joana Vasconcelos.
Explore the captivating world of Joana Vasconcelos: Discover the artist's vibrant and large-scale works that blend traditional crafts with contemporary art in stunning and unexpected ways.
The Verrière and Project Room is also hosting two solo exhibitions with gallery artists Irina Rasquinet and Geneviève Levivier. The exhibitions are open January 17 - March 1.
Joana Vasconcelos’ The Enchanted Forest (2024) transforms the gallery into a landscape of monumental textile art. Making its European debut, this latest incarnation of the artist’s acclaimed Valkyries series pays tribute to Queen Seondeok, a pioneering figure in East Asian history, through a kaleidoscopic interplay of color, light, and craft.
In Le Monde Sera Bleu…Ou Ne Sera Pas, Irina Rasquinet fills the gallery’s glass roof with her playful and beguiling sculptures and works on canvas.
Geneviève Levivier’s material - oriented and philosophical practice brings together recycled textiles, remnants of natural fibers, and pages of classic texts from her family's library for works that probe the interconnected and dynamic "Self" of psychoanalysis.
Joana Vasconcelos. The Enchanted Forest
February 1 - April 12, 2025
In the darkened nave of the gallery, The Enchanted Forest (2024) glistens in undulating forms. LED lights illuminate the monumental fabric curves of Joana Vasconcelos’ latest incarnation of her renowned Valkyries series. Inspired by the female figures of Norse mythology, the Valkyries each honor remarkable historical women. In this case, with Valkyrie Seondeok, the artist honors the second female sovereign in recorded East Asian history and the first reigning queen of Silla, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, from 632 to 647. The work, first exhibited in Hong Kong, is presented here for the first time in Europe.
Filling the gallery space with a kaleidoscopic series of textile drops rendered in the artist’s signature craft techniques, the sculpture evokes a nebulous living organism. The installation invites an interaction between the audience and the disorienting and inspiring reconfiguration of the space. “Enchanted Forest captures a futuristic spirit while retaining an enchanted allure,”
Vasconcelos describes, “The visitor does not really know where they stand, or if the installation itself is placed in the past or in the future, generating a feeling of being pretty amazed and pretty lost at the same time.”
The drops, which cohere into the immersive installation are also presented individually.
The work was made in the artist’s studio over six months using Dior textiles. The minute crochet, knit and sewn detailing, and the swirling maze of colors are signatures of the artist’s feminist practice, which elevates craft and artisanal techniques in monumental scale.
Irina Rasquinet. Le Monde Sera Bleu…Ou Ne Sera Pas
January 17 - March 1
In her practice, Irina Rasquinet creates monumental sculptures as well as fantastical and colorful jewellery. Her work is imprinted with a childlike gaze and spontaneity.
In the Glass Roof, Rasquinet presents Le Monde Sera Bleu…Ou Ne Sera Pas.
The artist’s sculptures, suspended from marine ropes and rendered in blue and gold fiberglass, epoxy paint, and at times swarovski crystals, sparkle and shift with the light. Exploring what is hidden in the visible realm, a meditation on what is beyond, and an ever playful invocation of childhood toys in her poetic installations, Rasquinet’s works are always whimsical.
For the artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, the sculptural works are paired with works on canvas that pair pigment with vodka. The circle, a recurring symbol in her work, embodies infinity, continuity and harmony.
Geneviève Levivier. Un Arbre à Soi
January 17 - March 1
Geneviève Levivier's experimental and conceptual artistic approach incorporates art, science and philosophy with a keen sense of materiality.
In the Project Room, with Un Arbre à Soi, Levivier works with natural fibers, recycled textiles and plants, as well as with digital and artisanal techniques. The textiles and artefacts are her way of poetically restoring her links with the earth and the world, to render its nuances and the complex, paradoxical feelings it generates, particularly in these troubled times.
The works, in her signature material-oriented and philosophical practice, are situated at the nexus of body and spirit, Nature and the interconnected and dynamic "Self" of psychoanalysis.
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