the project

Dimitri, December 2016

The workshop, the house, the garden, all three places form a whole, the testimonial of an artist, his aesthetic and his time. The residence we are setting up attests to a wish for continuity. We are maintaining a certain know-how and preserving a memory, but also and above all, making it known and bringing it to life.

Within this framework, we believe it is necessary to open up the Atelier Pierre Culot to other artists and other practices. This workshop must live as much by its references, its past, its collection and Pierre’s creations as by what can be created there today, so that its heritage can live on. This residence will keep the workshop alive, maintain a dialogue and encourage debate. These encounters are all the more necessary at a time when the world of art is so exciting and when frontiers between disciplines are becoming blurred, whether it be design, sculpture, architecture or craftsmanship.

Dimitri Jeurissen, art director & collector, Founding partner BaseDesign

artists in residence

Éric Croes, 2018

Éric Croes was born at La Louvière in 1978. He grew up in Jodoigne, and at 19, joined the Atelier sculpture de la Cambre. After his training, he expanded his research work, experimenting with different disciplines – watercolour, painting, ink drawing, sculpture – before developing an interest in ceramics. He attended evening courses at the Académie d’Etterbeek, where his interest in ceramics turned into a passion. Composing simple and ordinary objects, the artist discovered in enamel work the depth of colours he had loved when painting in his younger years. In 2014 he bought his first kiln, later installing a ceramics workshop in his basement, where he continued his research into enamels. The artist approached ceramics like a piece of writing, a means of telling stories. The ‘art of fire’, as it is called, also appealed to him, because the created product undergoes a transformation caused by firing which cannot be completely controlled. Éric Croes is and remains a sculptor. He lives and works in Brussels. He is the first resident of the Atelier Pierre Culot.

With Éric Croes, the gesture starts with a story, a book, a song or a text that speaks to him and motivates him. For this first residence at the Atelier Pierre Culot, Éric re-read l’Écume des jours [Froth on the Daydream] the novel, or rather the fairy tale written by Boris Vian, published in 1947. In an imaginary universe where he can give his eyelids a bevel cut, Colin, the hero, falls madly in love with Chloe, a graceful and gentle young woman whom he meets at the birthday party of the poodle Dupont. The couple marry, but Chloe falls ill: a waterlily is growing in her lung. To cure her, Colin must offer her cut flowers. These offerings are a source of inspiration for Éric Croes. In his own way, the sculptor has invented a universe of his own, telling a story by picking out various elements from the book for own his creations: the elephant of Jean-Saul Partre, the nail of Jesus, the boot of the red knights, the waterlilies and butterflies, etc. His creations produced within the framework of the residence, the Colin vase and the Chloe vase, are works as original as they are generous, very personal and yet respectful of the poetic bric-à-brac of the fiction. To each his poetry…

Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel, 2018
with the collaboration of Richard Dewar

The second artists-in-residence are the sculptors Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel, a French-British duo who won the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2012. Working together since 1997, these artists have reconnected with traditional sculpture practices, at the same time creating complex, contemporary images in their works.

Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel's idea of sculpture involves a strong physical dimension. The artists cut stone and wood, model clay, and fire stoneware in a kiln they have built in their studio.
They insist on expertise, believing that an understanding of techniques is fundamental to the development of their work.

They also talk about transmission. At the Pierre Culot studio, they have collaborated with Richard Dewar, Daniel's father, a renowned ceramist. This has been an enriching experience as, like Pierre Culot, Richard Dewar was influenced in his younger days in the 1970s by the traditions of English and Japanese pottery, in particular the work of ceramists such as Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada.

The works at the residence are made from green and brown enamelled stoneware, frequently seen in the artists' productions. We see a series of tiled murals from which hand-turned pottery shapes jut out horizontally, in a fun way. A cup, a bottle, a jug and other utilitarian objects related to the history of pottery lose their functional role here, suddenly confronting the viewer.

The artists Daniel Dewar (1976, UK) and Grégory Gicquel (1975, FR) first collaborated as students and have been working together ever since. Their iconoclastic work violates the pre-established codes of sculpture and features a continuous physical reengagement with materials and processes through a hyperawareness surrounding the craftsmanship and tradition of the medium. The display of erudition and joyful anarchy is nicely offset by the many ways in which the often used references glance back at the past, casting an ironic shadow on the present tense in passing.

Richard Dewar has dedicated his life to making ceramics. Born in England in 1948 he studied at Bath Academy of Art and later at Harrow School of Art after which he established his first studio in the Forest of Dean in 1972. Seven years later he moved to France, initially working in Loire-Atlantique and more recently in the department of Morbihan where he continues to produce individual wood-fired stoneware pieces. He has become an esteemed tutor and demonstrator of his craft. Richard exhibits internationally and his work appears in private and public collections around the world.

Recent solo exhibitions include The Mammal and the Sap, Portikus, Frankfurt (2017), Le Nu et la Roche, Hab galerie, Nantes (2016), The Nude and the Sap, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2017), Digitalis, KIOSK, Ghent (2016); Stoneware Murals, Etablissment d’En Face, Brussels (2015); La jeune sculpture, Musée Rodin, Paris (2014); Le Hall, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013); Jus d’orange, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013) and Crêpe Suzette, Spike Island, Bristol (2012). Recent group exhibitions include Pastoral Myths, La Loge 2015 ; Words aren't the thing, CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania (2014); Labour and Wait, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California (2013); Conjuring for Beginners, Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2012); and Making is Thinking, Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2011). In 2012 they won the Prix Marcel Duchamp.

David De Tscharner, 2019

His creations reflect the interplay between the past and present of the Workshop between construction and deconstruction, in a deliberately playful approach.

David de Tscharner likes to draw on the context and atmosphere of the places he visits. For this residency, the sculptor first became involved in the day-to-day running of the workshop, learning the rudiments of plate-moulding techniques from Pascal Slootmakers, the workshop manager.

Once he had mastered the technique, the artist went on to make plates on which he created architectures, working with fragments of moulded crockery. His creations reflect the interplay between the workshop's past and present, between construction and deconstruction, in a deliberately playful approach. The history of the place and the personality of Pierre Culot run through these creations.

In the third stage, David proceeded with the enamelling. Rather than enamelling the pieces one by one, as would be customary in artisanal work, he stacked his plates in piles, inspired by the piles of crockery found here and there in the studio. Slipping between the gaps and hollows, the enamel welds together the assembly proposed by the artist. Used in this way, the technique does not finalise the piece, but integrates the work, making the creative process visible.

The result becomes a collage. Whereas Pierre Culot made a clear distinction between the work of a sculptor and that of a craftsman, David de Tscharner appropriates the two statuses, bringing them together rather than confronting them, creating an ambiguity between the object and the sculpture, between the perception of what we see and the work we apprehend. The utilitarian object becomes sculpture.

Born in Lausanne in 1979, he is a graduate of ESBA, the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Geneva, and La Cambre in Brussels, where he teaches. He has worked with artists such as Florence Doléac, Benoit Platéus, Céline Vaché-Olivieri, Charlie Jeffery, Gabriel Ghebrezghi (Ghostape), Eric Croes and Jean-Baptiste Bernadet. His artistic career took off in 2012 with his first solo exhibition, One Sculpture a Day Keeps the Doctor Away, at Aliceday Gallery in Brussels. This project is the culmination of a year's work, during which the artist created one sculpture a day and posted them on the website www.1sculpture1day.com. David has since taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions in France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland. He is represented by the Valeria Cetraro gallery in Paris.

Mon Colonel & Spit, 2019
in collaboration with Alice Gallery

For this fourth residency, the Atelier Pierre Culot invited the artist duo Mon Colonel & Spit. Pascal Slootmakers, a ceramist at the studio for over thirty years, taught the artists the moulding technique. The artists played with some of the particularities of working with enamel, leaving drips and other unexpected traces on their creations that are usually rejected by ceramists. In this way, they are following in the footsteps of Pierre Culot, who also appreciated the little accidents that are part of the creative process. One hundred vases have been made. Each piece is unique. The ensemble is heterogeneous, reflecting the work of the duo, but each one gives a glimpse of the poetic universe of the Liégeois.

The Atelier Pierre Culot is interested in artists whose work is in some way related to ceramics. Last June, its directors really enjoyed the exhibition by the artist duo Mon Colonel & Spit, presented at Alice Gallery. Intrigued by the creative universe of these two people from Liège, at once generous and iconoclastic, funny and uninhibited, the Atelier Pierre Culot offered them a residency, which the duo accepted.

Éric knew Pierre Culot's work. Éric Bassleer has a passion for ceramics, and became interested in his world when he came across a vase made by the artist at a flea market. In Roux-Mirroir, the duo enjoyed the tranquillity of the countryside, taking pleasure in meeting the neighbours and locals. Mon Colonel & Spit also enjoyed discovering the studio and its history. He was intrigued by the Citroën vase. It was created by Pierre Culot for the French car manufacturer in 1970. At the time, every new owner of a Citroën received this vase as a gift. We wondered," explains Mon Colonel, "what might be going through people's minds when they received this gift. The vase was the inspiration for the 100 pieces designed and created by the duo during their residency.

The duo is made up of Éric Bassleer, aka Mon Colonel (Liège, 1974), and Thomas Stiernon, aka Spit (Liège, 1977). They formed following the split in 2008 of collectifERS, a collective of graffiti artists and street artists. Their work is produced by four hands. The artists express themselves through drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, installations and, in recent years, ceramics. In addition to the streets of Liège, their influences range from the Beat Generation to graffiti, Art Brut, Brutalist architecture and everyday noise. The duo have recently exhibited at BPS22, the Musée d'art de la Province de Hainaut, the Mima museum and ALICE Gallery in Brussels, and are also collaborating with Hervet Manufacturier in Paris.

the residence