Actualités
7 September - 21 October 2023
Opening Thursday September 7, for the opening of Brussels Gallery Weekend at the Frédérick Mouraux Gallery, Brussels, Belgium, in the presence of the artist.
Frédérick Mouraux Gallery is pleased to present the recent works by French artist Françoise CATALÁA in her solo exhibition “Actualités”, her first solo exhibition in Brussels.
Welcome to the Exhibition Tour:
My Signature, 2010
Neon, 65 x 65 x 6 cm (+5 cm with neon). Unique piece.
As you enter the Frédérick Mouraux Gallery, you can read "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ..." in a neon piece. This represents time given. Everyone has had this experience in their youth. We all know that three or four people counted in our lives. But we have no way of knowing who counted for the other.
Small Steps - Dialogue, 2023
Encrypted fabric (light beige), 133 x 133 cm. Unique piece.
To try and imagine all the people who counted for so many others, Françoise Catalàa researched series of "1 2 3 4 5 6 7" first in a few common languages, then in 250 ancient and contemporary languages, and now has an archive of 5,300 languages. It took her thirty-one years to complete this collection. The three small dots indicate the separations of the languages, punctuating the sequences "1 2 3 4 5 6 7". As an exemple, after English, it's a Tuareg count from the Sahara, and then the first seven digits of the ten digits imagined by the writer James Joyce in "Finnegans Wake".
Tribute to Esther Hess, 2018
Encrypted fabric, 31 x 31 cm, (38.5 x 38.5 cm framed). Unique work in 7 inseparable elements.
For each exhibition, Françoise Catalàa pays tribute to someone who has passed away and with whom she has been able to engage in constructive dialogue. The idea was accepted by the gallerist Frédérick Mouraux. After paying tribute to a philosopher, an American painter and a member of her family, Françoise Catalàa chose the 7th anniversary of the death of Esther Hess to pay tribute to this highly cultured artist. (Don't hesitate to read the text close to the work in the exhibition).
Woman Life Freedom - in many languages, 2022
Encrypted fabric (white), 102 x 60 cm. Unique piece.
As the theme accepted by the gallery owner was "Actualités" / "News", the first piece pays homage to Masha AMINI. She was a young Iranian girl of Kurdish origin who, on a visit to Tehran - city which she was discovering for the first time - wearing a headscarf called a hijab that let a lock of her hair escape. The morality police arrested her and took her away. Her parents, who were present, did not even know where their daughter was being taken. She was released three days later, and the street surveillance cameras saw her collapse dead from the effects of being locked up. Following this, some young girls decided to stop wearing the headscarf; some cut off locks of their hair, others shaved their heads completely to avoid being accused by the morality police of 'teasing' men with their hair. Brothers and boys related to the girls who were later locked up demonstrated in support of their sisters and relatives. Many were injured or killed in spontaneous protests.
In mid-September 2023, it will be a year since these events took place.
Alert, 2021
Encrypted Fabric (white), 154 x 24 cm. 7 unique pieces, (sold together or separately).
a. Chestnut, b. Pipal, c. Lime-tree, d. Oak, e. Ginkgo Biloba, f. Tulip tree in Virginia, g. Maple in Canada
Following on from the "News" theme accepted by gallerist Frédérick Mouraux, Françoise Catalàa draws our attention to the future of biodiversity. If trees are affected, so are birds, insects and so on. Thus, it is a whole circuit of life that collapses. To illustrate her point, Françoise Catalàa has chosen trees from different continents: the Canadian maple that burnt down this summer, three European trees such as the chestnut, lime, and oak, attacked by insects or fungi that are harmful to them. The Ginkgo Biloba, the only place where it is still in a state of primary forest, is on the outskirts of Shanghai. And the inevitable expansion of a city, like any large city, leads to concrete encroaching on the forest. Finally, the pipal in India, where tourists want a piece of this sacred tree because Buddha is said to have had an enlightenment under this type of tree. Tourists love to keep a leaf or a branch as a souvenir of the bark, which is detrimental.
Small Woods Carved with Numbers, 2002-2018 and Françoise Catalàa on the right.
Teak standing wood, 9 x 9 cm (20 x 20 cm framed). 7 unique pieces (sold separately).
These series of numbers were carved from teak standing wood, which is very hard and rot-proof (insects don't like to eat it). The fact that the fibre is presented perpendicular to the wall requires a real effort to carve it: you must tap energetically and almost immediately retain the chisel.
Each sculpture requires almost a year's work.
Small Steps - Barbed Wire, 2023
Encrypted fabric (white), 97 x 63 cm. Unique piece.
In her career as an artist, Françoise Catalàa was invited to South Africa by the French Embassy for the inauguration of the first Cultural Institute - that of France - opened after apartheid and the first democratic elections. On the occasion of this solo exhibition in 1995 in the Newton Gallery, the artist was surprised, as she travelled around the country, by all the varieties of barbed wire that demarcated the "protected zones". Recently, barbed wire has come to line Europe.
Petits pas - War / Small Steps - War, 2023
Encrypted fabric (light beige), 133.5 x 132.5 cm. Unique piece.
This work reflects current events in Europe over the last year and a half. Unfortunately, research into the series of numbers has shown that it was often in war stories that we found these "1 2 3 4 5 6 7" counts: how many dead, how many houses destroyed, how much booty, how many hospitals, how many schools ravaged...
Small Steps 1 - Finding Your Way, 2023
Chiffon fabric (white), 140 x 76.5 cm. Unique piece.
A war causes people to leave their homes, looking for shelter, food, a place to live...
Small Steps 2 - Anxiety about Finding the Right Path, 2023
Chiffon fabric (white), 140 x 76.5 cm. Unique piece.
Finding the right path is vital to survival.
Small Steps 3 - Couple and Child, 2023
Chiffon fabric (white), 140.5 x 76.5 cm. Unique piece.
A couple who have found somewhere to live will want to have a child. A child runs parallel to its parents' footsteps.
Small Steps 4 - Rising through Study, 2023
Chiffon fabric (white), 140.5 x 76.5 cm. Unique piece.
The desire of migrants who have managed to settle down. Their children must learn at school, excel at university... Throughout the generations, it's an evolution through study.
Shock Waves, 2023
Encrypted fabrics, (white), [107.5 -108 - 107 - 107.5 - 107.5 - 108 - 107] x 24 cm.
7 unique pieces (sold separately).
Every war is a shock. It's a shockwave that turns daily life upside down for everyone.
Selected Pieces, 2023
Encrypted fabrics, framed under glass, 27 x 27 cm. 7 unique pieces (sold separately).
These Selected Pieces are like a little moment that you might want to remember and take away with you from the exhibition.
Babel Cloud 1, 2022, Encrypted fabric (light beige), 114 x 58 cm. Unique piece.
Babel Cloud 2, 2022, Encrypted fabric (light beige), 113.7 x 57 cm. Unique piece.
Babel Cloud 3, 2022, Encrypted fabric (light beige), 114 x 50.2 cm. Unique piece.
The cloud allows us to store holiday photos and send them to friends. Journalists now use it to store their television and print news in the same way.
This is the opposite of the Tower of Babel, whereas the Tower was built, languages multiplied and communication was no longer possible. Here, journalists transmit the same day the film they have made in the morning. On the evening news, they give viewers the subtitled video taken in the morning. The difficulty is to see news of fires, floods, earthquakes, population movements, war trenches, etc. in real time from the comfort of your own living room. So, we are constantly receiving shock waves.
"The Knots" - Message from the viewer, 2023. Photo taken after one week of exhibition.
Installation by Françoise Catalàa at the Frédérick Mouraux Gallery.
This type of installation has accompanied Françoise Catalàa's exhibitions since 1990.
In general, visitors may discover a link, at a given moment in the exhibition, that echoes their personal experience or sensibility. They might want to record this feeling on a prepared strip of paper, which they then tie to the grid: only Françoise Catalàa will read these secret messages, at the end of the exhibition, on 21 October 2023. It is time stored up like white vegetation invading the grids.
My Signature, 2010
Neon, 65 x 65 x 6 cm (+5 cm with neon). Unique piece.
Finally, to finish the exhibition, take another look at the 'Signature' to read the neon again. At that point, the sequence of figures can be understood as a single number: "one million two hundred and thirty-four thousand five hundred and sixty-seven". You will be able to feel the density of a life full of dialogue and encounters.
Collectors, rest assured! Fabrics have been around since the dawn of time. They have been found in Egyptian tombs and all over the world for 5,000 years. In museums, some fabrics can be protected by anti-UV Plexiglas. Françoise Catalàa's fabrics don not spoil over time and can even be dry-cleaned (and moths don't eat cotton!).