Aline Bouvy and Simon Davenport at Maison Grégoire

Artists: Aline Bouvy and Simon Davenport

Exhibition title: Pale, Havoc.

Curated by: Emmanuel Lambion

Venue: Maison Grégoire, Brussels, Belgium

Date: March 25 – May 20, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Maison Grégoire

‘Pale, Havoc.’, is an exhibition specially conceived by Aline Bouvy and Simon Davenport for the space of Maison Grégoire.
The title, alongside the crepuscular mood pervading both the invitation card as well as the artworks, directly suggest a sort of implicit contrast with the modernist architecture by Henry Van de Velde, articulated around a circulation of light and life.
Unlike number of recent projects organized for and at Maison Grégoire these past years, this exhibition does not play the card of the « integration ». Quite on the contrary, one of the starting points of the project was precisely the elicit feeling of intrusion in the poly-functional and domestic space which is Maison Grégoire.

At different levels. At a formal level first, through the invasion of the house and of its garden by cumbersome formal elements, and then on a symbolic and metaphoric level as well. For the sculptural elements conceived by Bouvy & Davenport obviously belong to the realm of public space and stand in sheer contrast with the intimacy of the domestic context.
A further element of intrusion is brought about by further sculptural elements such as e.g. jesmonite low reliefs, which seem to emerge from the walls in the guise of spectral apparitions, conveying Bouvy’s fascination for a disturbing intimacy.

Sharing with Aline Bouvy the sense of a stylised and eclectic formal vocabulary, where the very abstract and quasi-totemic presence or suggestion of the human body is often implicit, Simon Davenport also focused on a sculptural element which fundamentally re-articulates the link of the architecture with its immediate surroundings, that is the garden.
All in all, the red thread through the exhibition may be precisely this oppressive presence of exogenous, alien forms throughout the domestic space of Maison Grégoire, expressing an infiltration from both the inside and from the outside world, much in line with a conceptual and formal understanding of the idea of porosity of frontiers and limits, whichever these may apply to.
This is also where the narrative and aesthetic continuum created by Bouvy & Davenport, informed by the eclectic plastic vocabulary typical of their individual practices, manages to challenge and disrupt, if in a temporary way, the usual atmosphere of harmony, serenity and quietness which Maison Grégoire usually offers to his visitors.