‘BALLS & GLORY’

Balls & Glory, the current exhibition at Rodolphe Janssen Gallery, in Brussels features nine promising emerging artists, whose style and techniques show completely different approaches to art: Sarah Caillard, Etienne Courtois, Kasper De Vos, Douglas Eynon, Julien Goniche, Liesbeth Henderickx, Alejandra Hernández, Sanam Khatibi, Klaas Vanhee.

Balls & Glory is the result of research carried out by the Rodolphe Janssen Gallery staff (Sybille du Roy, Monica Gallab, Eléonore Jacquard, Stéphanie Jezierski and Julie Senden) after visiting many emerging artists’ studios in Belgium.

On the one hand we come across humor in Kasper de Vos’ work, in which he uses found materials, converting them into everyday objects through sculpture and installation. On the other hand we encounter a poetic frailty in the elongated feminine figures, covered in blue pigment in Sarah Caillard’s artwork. Etienne Courtois presents photographic works, which are an intersection between photography and painting. The artist overlaps layers of photographic images and pictorial surfaces, distancing us from reality, while offering at the same time glimpses of what is tangible. In this game of referencing/ alluring to what is real there has been created by these images a demand for time of observation in order to search for what was reality and what has become painting. In addition to crossing two different media and demanding the viewer’s duplicity in the construction of the artwork, is Douglas Eynon’s site-specific installation of landscape painting and sculpture. Alejandra Hernández shows a colorful and lively approach to painting and drawing through an installation of a series of portraits and daily life scenes in which happiness and trouble seem to be side by side.

Rodolphe Janssen Gallery offers us the opportunity to see the work of promising Belgian artists. Balls & Glory will be on display until the 13th of February 2016.

by: Catarina Vaz