The emerging Brussels art scene is showcased at Montoro12 Gallery

PERSEVERANCE is a series of exhibitions initiated by Montoro12 gallery director Stefan Pollak, introducing emerging artists living and working in Brussels. The fourth chapter, The Gentle Articulation of an Already Damaged Future, reflects about physical and architectural bodies, about how to deal with the past and future, a future that is not full of boundless potential, but already scarred, breaking under the weight of the past. Gentleness, here, is not weakness, but rather a soft defiance against the hard edges of despair. We cannot fix, but we can create meaning through how we confront the damage. PERSEVERANCE IV is curated by Sam Lomprez and Stefan Pollak.

Thomas Lambert

Thomas Lambert’s (°2000) artistic practice explores the technique of classical fresco painting and its reinterpretation in a contemporary context. His work, blending statuary and bas-relief, unfolds in mimicry with architectural structures. He investigates the spatiality of his pieces' volume - from their conception to their installation - artificially playing with solid and empty spaces. The development of his projects involves creating a design charter inspired by classical treatises on painting techniques. This methodology, transmitted in a fragmentary manner, opens a space for interpretation for the viewer.

Rosamonde Pacteau

Rosamonde Pacteau’s (°2000) work follows a fragmentary protocol, blending images, drawings, sculptures, and installations deployed in space. Rosamonde questions the way of building while exploring spatial relationships, material friction, and the vibration emitted by the combination of materials. Whether site-specific or modular, sculptures and installations unfold, a repertoire of forms emerges; between flat surface and volume, they become spatial translations of drawings, interacting with their exhibition environment. Her works are assembled by manipulating construction materials, stripping them of their function. Through construction techniques and material wear, oxidation becomes color, matter becomes pictorial, and the tension between visible and invisible emerges.

Abel Hartooni

Through a fragmentary visual and textual language, Abel Hartooni (°1998) explores how the process of making can embody new narratives. Paintings of the past, fragmented historical narratives, screenshots from social media, and natural phenomena such as the sky are all recurring fascinations that animate his practice. His work explores the relationship between the material history of painting, and the process of queer diasporic subject formation. Central to his research is the relationship between the body and the landscape. The works in the exhibited series draw from the pictorial traditions of 17th-century Isfahan, the capital of the Safavid Empire. By revisiting this politically and culturally charged landscape, he explores the social, sexual, and economic structures embedded within it, offering a contemporary re-reading. For him, the landscape is not merely a distant projected image on a substrate, but is rather a field of action; a crystallization of gestures, movements and intimacies in space.

Harold Delhaie

Driven by introspection and critical reflection, Harold Delhaie (°1999) focuses on the relationship between memory, movement, and bodily identity. Through forms suspended between reality and fiction, he seeks to deconstruct aesthetic norms and reveal the grace of the atypical. The body becomes a field of experimentation, a language in its own right.

His images - both imprints and performances - oscillate between control and surrender, constructing the representation of the body through revelation or erasure. Floating silhouettes, devoid of context, emerge and evoke the tension between appearance, identity, and projection. These figures disturb, arouse a quiet curiosity, an invitation to reflect on what makes an image, what makes a body, what leaves a trace.

Mey Semtati

Mey Semtati (°1997) explores the boundaries of memory, between imagination and reality. Painter and sculptor, her work is inspired by the imprints of the past, childhood narratives, and objects marked by time. By combining various mediums, the artist invites viewers into sensitive labyrinths where memories interact with aspirations. Her work is a celebration of the vulnerability of things, places, and memories - a tribute to what persists despite deterioration.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

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