Alice Mogabgab Gallery presents a show by Clémence van Lunen

The new Brussels gallery Alice Mogabgab presents from 17 March a solo show by the Belgian artist Clémence van Lunen (° 1959, Brussels, lives & works in Paris).

Clémence van Lunen's new ceramics, by their exaggerated volumes, their dilated shapes, give to this declination of Succulents (variety of cactus) an aspect with funny, mischievous, and jubilant shapes. These compositions are defying all academic proportions, by the many areas of raw earth, and which appear in the middle of an enamel that runs like a sap flow in a sweetened colour.

These recent sculptures by Clémence van Lunen are created with industrially fabricated hollow bricks. The still humid bricks are cut, twisted, stuck together, fired, enamelled, re-fired and assembled. Finally, the assembled pieces take on forms resembling plants with fleshy parts: succulents. Contrary to her previous series Wicked Flowers, sculpted from unformed stoneware clay and roughly worked into shape in a powerful hand-to-hand process, the Succulents have their own inner architecture which the artist explores and boldly manipulates: « It is important for me to always seek new formal languages. »

Jubilation is a booklet in French, Dutch, English and Arabic accompanying the exhibition. It contains an essay by Yves Michaud, and is designed and printed in Beirut by the Editions de la Galerie.

​Clémence van Lunen ​
​Succulentes - Recent sculptures
​17 MArch – 27 April 2019 ​
​Gallery Alice Mogabgab
​Rivoli - Chaussée de Waterloo 690 - Space 28
​BE-1180 Brussels
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​Opening on Sunday 17 March from 3pm to 7pm

Clemence Van Lumen
​Clémence van Lunen was born in Brussels in 1959; she lives and works in France. From 1979 to 1984 she studied under the sculptor Michel Smolders at the Ecole Supérieure d’Arts Plastiques in Brussels and later under the sculptor Etienne Martin at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris. Having used wood structures for her early works, she went on to develop her sculptures in ceramic. After various residencies in Spain (with a grant from the Casa Vélasquez from 1991 to 1993), then in France (at the Rairies Montrieux, in 2004) and in China, where she studied on a regular basis between 2004 and 2009 with master Liu at Jingdezhen, van Lunen has continually broadened her experience and masters many different techniques of ceramic art. In 2006 she was invited by the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres to create two editions in bisque porcelain, Dragon dans les nuages, and Floating Flowers. In 2008, 2009 and 2017 she was invited to the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC) in Holland for new research. Clémence van Lunen works thematically in a number of series. These are entitled Rocailles, Doodles, Vagues, Gothic, Wicked Flowers, Tang Family and Brick & Flowers.
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​Clémence van Lunen's sculptures are regularly exhibited in art galleries, at international art fairs and museums. Major institutions having hosted her work since 2013 include Musée Royal, Mariemont, Belgium (2013), Musée des Beaux-arts Eugène Leroy, Tourcoing (2014), Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan (2015), Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2015), Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres (2015), Maison Rouge, Paris (2016), Hôtel de Ville des Baux-de-Provence (2016), Musée National des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (2016) and Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design, Bordeaux (2018). In 2018 the city of Bordeaux inaugurated, under the guidance of artistic director Catherine David, two monumental fountains by van Lunen, issued from the series Wicked Flowers.
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