Nils Vandevenne (Né en 1995)

In his sculptures and paintings, Nils Vandevenne relies on a process of alteration. He adopts a gesture close to that of a craftsman, and manages to make his works resonate with the free work of the hand that acts at the same time as his imagination. This vision of creation becomes the necessary injunction to establish a privileged relationship with form through direct confrontation with the material. His approach to painting, which consists not in adding matter but in removing it, takes on a sculptural dimension. In the same way that direct carving attacks a block of stone to extract its contained form, Nils Vandevenne approaches the vinyl paint with carpenter's or craftsman's tools, altering the surface to reveal the different layers of thematerial :

"When I alter the surface, all the layers of the object's former life emerge. This gesture of subtracting material is an animal, instinctive gesture. So I dig, search, and finally rediscover a material history of the life of the support, or of what it was. The result then takes the form of a grid, a circle, or a simple line."

Nils Vandevenne

Opening: 28 November, 6.30pm