This is a love song at Deborah Bowmann

Artists: Tatiana Defraine and Romain Juan (Floral compositions by Deborah Robbiano)

Exhibition title: This is a love song

Venue: Deborah Bowmann, Brussels, Belgium

Date: May 26 – July 14, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Deborah Bowmann, Brussels

A duo exhibition by two artists who work in parallel rather than collaboratively. A dialogue between the two studios. One practices sculpture and the other painting. Both with a certain notion of narration. Telling a story through the use of figures.

Whether decomposed and recomposed as in Romain Juan’s case or rendered expressive through pictorial figurations as can be seen in Tatiana Defraine’s paintings. These two practices come together and converge while maintaining their individual synthetic and expressive approach to the human figure. Expressionist pop? To speak in classical terms that reference the past. An appropriation of styles and forms. Fashion as a starting point, whether in the decomposed models of Romain or in the elegant silhouettes of Tatiana. They borrow from magazines and fashion stores to refigure a reality that touches our body in an ironic distancing of what could be read as too banal, everyday, too real. Disfigure to configure new poses, gestures that speak of integrating the architecture that absorbs the characters. A flattening in the painting where women are caught up by accessories, cosmetics and the decor. We imagine them attending a fashion show of decomposed figures of woman/man. The white characters in the middle of the room are the main attraction of this fashion show. Women are posing as actresses. They whisper, they tell, they forget where they are and why and how they got there? The spectacle of the feminine masculine laid bare by her enthusiasts.

-Sonia Dermience