Mathis Collins at LEVY.DELVAL

Artist: Mathis Collins

Exhibition title: Wet French

Venue: LEVY.DELVAL, Brussels, Belgium

Date: January 21 – April 9, 2016

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and LEVY.DELVAL, Brussels

Wet french is Mathis Collins second solo exhibition in Brussels following his 2007 Ceremony, a chocolate box in the shape of a funeral crown displayed in V-tro’s store front.
Wet French is an echo to Dry french, Collins 2015 solo show at the Palais de Tokyo where people where pictured sittting at a café terrasse transforming their foods and beverages into statues.

Dry French came from a 1970’s series of english newspaper advertisment for the french vermouth company Noilly-Prat, picturing in documentary like photographies young couples chatting, flirting, kissing in cafés. A few others depict people alone, a women in a market, a man smoking.

Wet French exposes the solitary figure of the waiter and his customer, both melancholic when confronted to the dynamic group of jolly amateur artists that in turn draw cartoons of them.

Wet French is a liquid state that washes the terrasse where every morning I read love letters and write grant applications.