BRUSSELS.- Obsession originates from the “illness” inherent to collectors: art addiction.

Obsession brings to light a typical aspect of artistic research: repetition.

Like “the serpent biting its own tail,” we, collectors and artists, the former by acquiring, the latter by creating, all go in search of what could make sense of the world surrounding us, because “who can pretend to get out of the circle one believes to have chosen?” – Gérard Garouste

In many respects, the emotional charge of this opus is intense: the amount of works presented, sweeping the times, from the Bronze Age until today; the profile of the four invited collectors; the two literary guests, François Rachline and François de Coninck; the invited artist Gérard Garouste, putting himself in the skin of a collector by imagining and choosing, besides his own works, his dreamed collection; and finally, Elizabeth Garouste, his wife, designer.

Obsession is a “hanging of works of art.” More than ever this term is meaningful in this environment, which mixes several collections with the works of an artist. The works are "hung" in a house according to the unexpected dialogues they inspire. The collectors respected the rules of the game that Maison Particulière set out: to choose the exhibited artworks themselves. Indeed, how does one interfere with the obsessions of the others? This is where the particular, the individual, the emotional intervene. It’s from diversity that richness originates.

Our guests often uttered the following words, which appear in no particular order: "intensity, emotional charge, fascination, repetition, accumulation, compulsion, passion, desire, want.”

THE EKARD COLLECTION, built aver the years by a couple of passionate contemporary art collectors, is defined by statements of which technique, aesthetics, and materials are but a few.

Chris and Lieven Declerck’s participation, after States of Mind in 2014, makes sense as only a "healthily or sickly" intense spirit can collect. They thus reveal the abundance of a collection that does not limit itself to a theme, a media or a dimension.

Hélène David-Weill's collection rhymes with desire, pleasure, exchange and sharing. For Mrs. David-Weill, an artwork is, before anything else, “a desire;” and art, ”a meeting where we share and extend our scope of perception to infinity.”

Our collection finally, which has no explicit red thread, if not the stimulation of the “energies” and the astonishment that a work triggers in us. We opted to put forward in this exhibition a fascinating and mysterious shape, the circle, which, in our eyes, acts as a metaphor to the theme of the exhibition.

The contribution of the guest artist Gérard Garouste takes on a dual nature: that of him as an artist and that of him as an art collector, which he is not, except in his imagination. Because above all he confronts himself with painting, his work stands out in the universe of contemporary art. His choices of personal works as well as his choice of artworks by other artists, be they Neo Rauch, Ben or Sigmar Polke, all illustrate "a peculiar fixation", and a "way of making us accomplices" of his imagination.

We would also like to say a word about Elizabeth Garouste, an extraordinary guest. It is a pleasure for us to show, mixed with the daily furniture of Maison Particulière, her unusual, baroque and wonderful creations: pedestal table, stool or still coffee table which transport us into her personal universe.

Finally, two visions, two writing style, two outside witnesses, our literary guests: François Rachline and François De Coninck.

We invited the former because his relation, long and friendly with Gérard Garouste "imposed" us to ask him to write about Garouste’s works and the artistic obsession: "The creator is aware of his own strangeness. He embraces it openheartedly. … He lives with it night and day, and works at being worked by it."

The latter, introduced to us by a friend collector, of whom he had made a stunning portrait, offers us his writer’s pen for the works of the other artists. He draws his inspiration from the Obsession of the collector: his “desire makes him uneasy, inhabited by an obsession looking for a shape… It is a fugitive soul in a body that dreams with its eyes perpetually on the lookout.”