Once upon a time
The exhibition "Once upon a time ..." gathers works from Ariane Bosquet and Bertor. Ariane Bosquet's works are tinged with the sun of Africa but also soaked with Time which passes at the rate of the undivided Humanity. Bertor's sculptures made of stone with sometimes wood found on the beach tell us stories of imaginary people, stories of ourselves, which remain indefinite. The small sculptures are as fellow travellers whom we take in the pocket on the way of our life.
The works of Ariane Bosquet and Bertor plunge us into the world of the Humanity with its diversity, its uniqueness, its whim, its adventures, its past, its present, its future. A step towards an authenticity sometimes forgotten or walked by the foot.
Ariane Bosquet, Belgian artist (Brussels, 1959) fell in love with Africa.
Invited at the section « off » of the Biennale of Dak’art in 2006, Africa left her an indelible mark. It is in Mali, where she made an artist residency in 2008 at Chab Toure’s gallery and where she lived later several months that the wonderment was the strongest.
In Bamako, she also worked with dyers to learn the secrets of the « bazins », fabrics dyed in several tints, with tied or sewed reserves that make appear flamboyant patterns. Flamboyant is also the name of a tropical tree growing in the savannah, and from which she used the fruits (sort of big bean pods) to work on their prints, making appear scars, in her last paper works.
It is also in Mali that she brings back her raw materials for her new works : old rusted metal plates, pieces of fabrics picked up with tailers and dyers, and that she finds her Sahelian and indigo colors, leitmotiv of her work, work that only keep traces of wear and tear of all these elements, layer after layer revealed, with pigments, sand, glue, tint juices and sticked, crumpled, sewed, torn material.
« I like when the visitor could escape in my work, and could sometimes find some figurative representation that I don’t see »