Amelie Bouvier
The cosmos is a dizzying thought, but our species has created languages to make sense of that which surpasses us – religion, science, poetry. Amélie Bouvier’s work explores how our society observes and interprets the sky, researching astronomical imagery to situate our understanding of space in its cultural and historical context. In her new Photodessinographie series, Bouvier creates drawings from archival solar images in the Observatoire de Paris - Meudon. These negative photos on deteriorating glass plates show the Sun as a dark shadow, marred by a century of scratches and fingerprints. The artist reproduces the photos with an almost mechanical precision, using graphite and ink to capture the image of the past star as well as its support – the subtle depth of the glass, the traces of damage, its dissolving chemicals. With these observational drawings of a gradual disappearance, she reflects on the distance between a fixed image and our evolving reality. Bouvier’s textile works emphasize the fictional aspect of our spatial representations: drawings on canvas and large-scale panels depict extraterrestrial landscapes, taking from two centuries of astronomical imagery. Each work blends elements of drawing and photography into an autonomous narrative space, a montage in which heterogeneous sources coexist to tell a story. Together, they reflect on the human desire for celestial occupation, and what these projects reveal about our own fictions, anxieties, and delusions. Amélie Bouvier uses drawing as a form of visual analysis, a tool for acute observation in our image-saturated world. Engaging with light and transparency, knowledge and fantasy, place and placelessness, she proposes a new relevance for the medium – searching for the blind spots in our fields of vision. Bouvier (b.1982) lives and works in Brussels. Her artistic practice builds from historical research in the field of astronomy to question issues related to cultural memory and collective heritage.
Downtown - Gallery
Rue Isidoor Teirlinck 65, 1080 Brussels
Visit the website
Harlan Levey Projects (HLP) was co-founded by Winnie Kwok and Harlan Levey in Brussels, Belgium in 2013. Initially a project space for social dialogue and cross-disciplinary conversation, HLP turned its core focus to collaboration and support of ambitious and innovative artistic practice. The gallery works closely with a selected group of artists, tending for narrative-driven, conceptual and often research-based work, which explores various social, scientific and technological phenomena. In 2021, the gallery moved to a new location with over 250 sq m of exhibition space as well as artist studios and storage facilities. This space hosts a maximum of 5 exhibitions a year, taking a slow approach and offering more time for reflection. In addition to its exhibitions, HLP is committed to knowledge creation and transfer, producing a public program, which includes educational activities, such as residencies, lectures and workshops. In addition, HLP has played a pivotal role in the Belgian art scene serving on the committees of Brussels Gallery Weekend and Art Brussels. Harlan Levey was also a regular lecturer at the Higher Institute of Fine Art (HISK) in Ghent and the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht as well as working as an external expert for the European Commission’s “Science + Technology + Arts (STARTS)” program. In 2021, HLP co-founded Fundamental Research (with Dr. Beatrice de Gelder), a non-profit organization exploring the intersections of art, science and mental health.
HLP artists are represented in the collections of: MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York, US, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, US; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, US; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, US; The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, US; The Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR; KröllerMüller Museum, Otterlo, NL; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich, CH; S.M.A.K. - The Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, BE; M HKA - The Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, BE; Kanal – Centre Pompidou, Brussels, BE; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, BE, The Israel Museum, Tel Aviv, IL; and many other regional and university museums as well as library and corporate collections.