GALERIE ZOTTO PRESENTS: "PATE-A-SEL BRUSSELS": Brussels
In a world where art often feels constrained by the demands of the market, Pâte à Sel Brussels offers an alternative, starting with the most common materials — flour, water, and salt — to emphasize their symbolic significance.
Stems Gallery transforms into a space of reflection, where the ordinary becomes a form of resistance and a critique of the values dominating our contemporary society. Following Cendar Brussels, presented during Art Brussels 2022 — a transgressive exhibition where the ashtray, a mundane object, was reimagined as sculpture and happening — this new project continues to explore the reintroduction of the ordinary into the artistic, and now, commercial space. From January 23 to February 23, 2025, Stems Gallery becomes a place where material and critical thought meet, inviting us to reconsider the importance of what appears trivial.
Flour, water, and salt.
Three seemingly banal elements, disarmingly simple, are transformed into a medium of creation and reflection. Salt dough, modest and universal, recalls the first creative gestures of childhood and embodies a shared intimacy. Transposed into a professional context, this practice, typically associated with amateur art, inevitably invites a second level of interpretation. It reveals a work made precious by its vulnerability, navigating between a reminiscence of the past and a gentle critique of present tensions.
The ephemerality of these sculptures evokes the fragility of our time, where apparent abundance only temporarily conceals the impermanence of our systems. By diverting these components from their nourishing function, salt dough questions the precarious balance between immediate needs and culture, which is often reduced to a commodity in a world where instability is systemic. As a humble medium, salt dough echoes certain artistic concepts of the past, particularly those of Arte Povera, where objects, reduced to their purest substance, carried a powerful message. This movement, among other things, valued “poor” materials to challenge the excesses of a consumerist society. In the same way, salt dough, both simple and familiar, becomes a reflection of the economic and social transformations that constantly redefine our relationship with essentials. In a world where even the ordinary becomes uncertain, it raises critical questions about our perceptions of need and cultural objects.
In a commercial gallery, this material takes on a unique resonance. Art, often confined within speculative boundaries, here frees itself from established frameworks. The space is transformed into a domestic and familiar environment, where the everyday supplants the precious, and each work testifies to an emancipation from economic norms.
-- Galerie Zotto
With works by Chloé Arrouy, Léo-Paul Barbaut, Anastasia Bay, Guillaume Bijl, Théophile Blandet, Pauline Bonnet, Julien Boudet, Aline Bouvy, Deborah Bowmann, Quentin Caillaud, Eric Croes, Antoinette d’Ansembourg, Marlies De Clerck, Timothée de Brouwer, Aryo Toh Djojo, Raphaël Emine, Lionel Esteve, Arnaud Eubelen, Igor Fouqueray, Naomi Gilon, Justine Grillet, Béatrice Guilleman, Eyal Haddad, Elen Hallégouët, Maximilien Hauchecorne, Joséphine Jadot, Lionel Jadot, Jean-Baptiste Janisset, Eléonore Joulin, Elissa Lacoste, Florence Laprat, Harold Lechien, Marc Librizzi, Léo Luccioni, Dylan Maquet, Xavier Mary, Lilia Medjeber, :mentalKLINIK, Giulia Messina, Willie Morlon, Antoine Moulinard, Mathias Mu, Mathias Palazzi & Valentine Martin, Jacopo Pagin, Yemo Park, Daan Peeters, Nelson Pernisco, Emilie Pischedda, Frédéric Platéus, Clément Poplineau, Senne Roekens, Janne Schimmel & Helena Parys, Paola Siri-Renard, Eetu Sihvonen, Tommy Smits, Nicolas Stolarcyck, Christophe Terlinden, Morgane Tschiember, Bjornus Van Der Borght, Stef Van Looveren, Simon Verheylesonne, Tom Volkaert, Walter Wathieu, Romain Zacchi.
