La Loge in Brussels (BE) presents Poor Paintings by Béatrice Balcou from April 24th to July 6th, 2025.
The exhibition is part of the Suite programme, at the initiative of the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap), with the support of the Académie des beaux-arts.
Béatrice Balcou continues the work she began several years ago in collaboration with art restorers, repeating their gestures with a focus on works that have been damaged and restored. In doing so, she gains a sensitive and scientific insight into their materiality, intimacy, and life beyond their simple representation. In a society characterised by unbridled consumerism which also affects art, the act of taking time to observe, describe, detail, go over, and make do with what is already there is a political act.
The exhibition includes a series of paintings based on abstract works by other artists. These works and the video of a performance highlights restorative gestures and embodied knowledge: the mastery of craft and the clever processes that accompany it, and the intense pleasure experienced through this care, and by carrying out or observing manual action.
From November 2024 to April 2025, Béatrice Balcou was an artist in residence at La Loge where she realized the new body of works included in Poor Paintings.
Among the public events that will accompany the exhibition, we can announce a lecture by art critic and curator Julie Pellegrin on May 14th; a subjective guided tours with art restaurators Chira Bianchi and Francisco Mederos Henry (date to be confirmed). Visit our website www.la-loge.be to be updated about other events.
About the artist
Béatrice Balcou (1976, France) lives and works in Brussels.
In performances, sculptures and installations Béatrice Balcou creates secular rituals intended to care for the works of other artists and invitations to take time. By focusing on the different temporalities and materialities of the artwork and the behaviour of the viewer, she investigates the perceived value of art and the role assigned to it by our contemporary lifestyles.
Her work has been exhibited, among others : Musée d’art de Joliette (Québec, CA), M Museum (Louvain, BE), BEIGE (Brussels, BE), La Ferme du Buisson contemporary art center (Noisiel, FR), Exile (Berlin, DE), Casino forum d’art contemporain (Luxembourg, LU), A tale of a tub (Rotterdam, NL), Rozentraat (Amsterdam, NL), Jeu de Paume (Paris, FR), CAB Foundation (Brussels, BE), Villa Kujoyama (Kyoto, JP), Salle Principale (Paris, FR), FRAC Ile-de- France (Paris, FR), FRAC Franche-Comté (Besançon, FR), FRAC Bretagne (Rennes, FR), FRAC Corse (Corte, FR), FRAC Champagne-Ardennes (Reims, FR), kunsthalle (Recklinghausen, DE), La Galerie (Noisy-le-Sec, FR), Société (Brussels, BE), Jaqueline Martins gallery (Brussels, BE ), Été 78 (Brussels, BE), MAC VAL contemporary art museum of Val-de-Marne (Vitry-sur- Seine, FR), Kunstverein Langenhagen (DE), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, FR), WIELS (Brussels, BE) and Centre Pompidou (Paris, FR).
Béatrice Balcou’s work has been collected by many including Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Centre National des Arts Plastiques CNAP (Paris), FRAC Île-de-France (Paris), FRAC Franche-Comté (Besançon, France), FRAC Corsica (Corte, France), FRAC Normandie (Rouen, France), FRAC Lorraine (Metz, France), CIRVA (Marseille, France), Cera–M Museum (Leuven, Belgium), Fondation CAB (Brussels), MACS Musée des arts contemporains du Grand-Hornu (Mons, Belgium), Kunsthalle (Recklinghausen, Germany) as well as various private collections in France, Belgium, Germany and United States.
A monograph Ceremonies & has been published by MER editions (2021) in collaboration with Luc Derycke and Émilie Renard, with essays by authors such as Vanessa Desclaux, Christophe Gallois, Zoë Gray, Béatrice Gross, Julie Pellegrin, Émilie Renard , Septembre Tiberghien, Eva Wittocx and texts by the artist.
