“Une belle nuit” / Ludovic Beillard and Victor Delestre
19 February – 20 March, 2021
Island
69 rue Général Leman
1040 Brussels, Belgium
happened you were no longer beneath it.
You were no longer your skin, your poor skin, your parody of integument.
You rewind the thread of time,
You leave yourself.
You fast forward through it all.
Flashes.
You see everything again, it blinds you.
You experience a loss of lift.
It’s not coherent. You stumble.
All while remembering you forget.
Materials are not what they should be, forms have lost their meaning.
Has the outside already started to wither? Have the walls of the house already started to decay? Had a party
not been seized as an opportunity to move things around?
Like a film that shows you the dead.
You remember.
Memory unravels, it is reborn, then dies again.
You wobble like a puppet.
Whilst you thought you were dancing something cracked.
Do children still see the light of day as you did?
Are they still playing hide and seek behind the furniture?
Do their fire trucks still melt so easily in the chimney?
You’re confused. A whole world has come in with a crash and you weren’t there to welcome it.
With a speed that you have failed to experience.
Like all things, you have spent your time crumbling, coagulating, vitrifying yourself.
Twisting in all directions trying to preserve a memory.
What’s called a memory should bear its real name: “succubus”.
Colours have faded, energy has run out.
An old memory is simulated.
You want to slip into the lie a little longer,
You want to believe in it just for a little while,
You want to grab hold of every moment that seems happy to you, until nothingness.
You have lost your skin, lost your shape,
Yet you’re still that good old struggling carcass,
Unsure whether it is floating or falling.
Nothing else matters.
As far as you know, nothing ever happened.
Nothing precedes this moment.
You have taken a long time to remember
Awakening presents nothing more than shapeless illusions,
Leftovers of attire taken seriously
Your case history has taken its time as even the smallest machine measures you.
Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux and l’ERG in Brussels. His work has been recently shown in various galeries and institutions
such as at Etablissement d’en Face, Brussels (BE) and the Center For Contemporary Art Futura, Prague (CZ), Pierre
Poumet, Bordeaux (FR), 15 Orient, New York (US), Komplot, Bruxelles (BE), Polignano a Mare (IT),
Chabram, Touzac; L’Annexe, Paris (FR), Rectangle, Bruxelles (BE), Capsule, Rennes (FR), Alimentation générale,
Bruxelles; Deborah Bowmann, Bruxelles (BE), Cneai Paris (FR), Emily Harvey Foundation, New York; San Francisco
Art Institute (US), CAPC Bordeaux (FR).
Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux. He completed a Master at the Dirty Art Department, Sandberg Institute (MA Program of
Rietveld Academie), Amsterdam. He co-founded the artist-run-space Deborah Bowmann in 2014. He also has
experiences as an intervenant in different art schools such as Goldsmiths College (London), Kask (Gent), École des
Beaux arts de Dunkerque, Bruxelles and Bordeaux.
His work has been recently shown in various galeries and institutions such as at the MKG Hambourg (DE), Centre d’art
Passages, Troyes (FR), Vordemberge Gildewart Prize 2020, Den Hague (NL), Everyday Gallery, Anvers (BE), Festival
de l’Estran, Trégastel; MRAC Sérignan; FRAC MÉCA, Bordeaux (FR), Conradi Gallery, Cologne (DE), Project space
Saloon, Bruxelles (BE), 19ème Prix Fondation d’entreprise Ricard cur. by Anne-Claire Schmitz (FR), Chamber, NewYork City (US),, La Panacée, Montpellier; CAPC, Bordeaux; Cneai Paris (FR), Emily Harvey Foundation, New
York; San Francisco Art Institute (US) and of course at Deborah Bowmann Amsterdam and Brussels (NL & BE).