Lowood shook lose its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to

majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its

hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants:

I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre.

Excerpt of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Following one right after the other, Galerie Maria Lund is hosting the shows of two young women artists whose creative explorations respectively imply textile and ceramics.

Close to the sun (Proche du soleil), a solo exhibition of French artist Elise Peroi (11.09-10.10.2020), will be followed by another solo show – rv in the open air (rv à l’air libre) – dedicated to Danish artist Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen (16.10-28.11.2020). Both in their early thirties, the two artists innovate with power and poetry.

Elise Peroi transcends weaving to aspire to a form of total art that includes performance. As for Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen, she sculpts with a creative audacity where the primitive and the sophisticated combine.

Weaving is a thousand-year-old activity which is defined by a slow conversation between a static structure – the warp – and the repeated movements of the shuttle, the tool carrying the thread that inscribes the weft as it comes and goes. Weaving takes shape in the same way soil is cultivated, through thorough tilling, furrow after furrow. Its symbolism has been at the foundations of many mythologies: most often to evoke the fragile life thread held in the fatal hand of some divinity. For Elise Peroi, the metaphorical dimension of such a practice is as important as the material creation.  Bringing a woven artwork to existence is a whole, the body of the artist blends in the process. The matter spreads in space through performance, dance, sound and narratives… or simply through the volume given to it to open its “lungs”, expand its territory. Nature is one of the artist’s favoured subject matters and its materials are often directly integrated in her works (tree trunks, grass).

Elise Peroi has been deeply influenced by the works of landscaper Gilles Clément regarding cooperating with nature (Do as much as possible “with” and as little as possible “against”). She is equally interested in the thoughts of Michel Foucault on Heterotopia, these other places and lands, where dreams, fantasies and transitional states can thrive. The garden – paradise created par Mankind – is one of those unique places. It inspired Persian carpets – each carpet becoming a little mobile world of its own – and they have in turn been the starting point of the artist’s recent work. She uses the tufting technique, which allows the threads to sprout from the surface as growths reaching for sunlight.

The sun, vital force, lies at the heart of many artworks by Elise Peroi. It is treated as a subject matter in itself, – lights and greenery beam from the palpitating center of a lozenge – or through the myth of Icarus, who was betrayed by his wax wings when, exhilarated by his flight, he came too close to the celestial body… The artist has notably revisited Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s interpretation that only shows the legs of Icarus buried in the sea under a powerful sun and in front of a completely indifferent world, which continues his earthly toil. The artist has approached the myth under a playful angle, first imagining Icarus launching from a skateboard ramp; she finally went for the swing, which enables to approach the sun as it goes up (that thrilling sensation from childhood), quickly followed by the going down where dream encounters humility. The imaginary and narration are very present here, as in the rest of Elise Peroi’s work. As she conceived and created them, the artist tells herself stories that translate into her work. Faced with these surfaces with multiple parcels, the viewer, in turn, develops his/her own narration.  This is the case with Mal peignéé (Badly combed), a delicate artwork where the linen structure regularly makes way for thinned out grass stems, which inflorescence goes beyond the limits of the weave. The threads of the cut weft left raw, as hair in the wind, form the lower part of the work. Here the regular stripes right beyond meet a beautiful sensual mess.

The etymology of the word textile – from the Latin texere – reveals an interesting link. From its first signification (I century BCE) shelter; hide, cover, protect – actions relating to architecture – the meaning evolved to also signify weave, thread, braid, interlace one century later. Elise Peroi wanted to convey this double meaning in her work. Thus, architectures made of metallic stems replace the frame of the weaving loom to keep the tension and the volume of her works as many are “bellowed”: the even threads are woven together, the odd threads as well, and all of them are assembled on both sides by a knitting point, creating an opening between the two layers. Consequently, one can look inside the artworks that undulate on light structures, creating a sophisticated equilibrium between whole and void. A breath can pass through and bring life to the artwork.

Elise Peroi (born in Nantes in 1990) grew up in France and subsequently moved to Brussels to study at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts from where she graduated with a Masters in textile design in 2015. Since then has been living in the Belgian capital where she has her studio.

In 2018, her work was featured in a personal exhibition at the Fashion and Lace Museum in Brussels. The artist has been part of numerous group shows in France, Belgium and Italy since 2015 and is regularly invited for residencies for her woven work as well as for her performances (Fondation privée Carrefour des arts, Brussels ; La Serre – arts vivant, Montreal ;  Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles, Comacina Island, Italy ; etc.). With the support of the Halles de Schaerbeek since 2016, she develops textile performances that feed from weaving. Her collaboration with Hong-Kong dancer and choreographer Mui Cheuk-yin led to performances in Brussels as well as Hong-Kong.

Elise Peroi was awarded the Prix d’excellence de la ville de Bruxelles in 2015, the Young Belgium Talents Prize of The Affordable Art Fair Brussels in 2017 and the Prix de la fondation Charles Oulmont (Paris) in 2018. Le Botanique (Brussels) will dedicate a solo exhibition to Elise Peroi in 2021. Close to the sun (Proche du soleil), is her first solo show at the galerie Maria Lund.

In her latest works on paper, colour is much more present: subtle yet undeniable lights. The traces of large paintbrush gestures hold an important place -like a liberation, a new breath. One can recognize the impulse of certain calligraphers. Looking closer, one notices that these big movements juxtapose themselves with minuscule touches of ink or pencil. These transform the gesture into an element of landscape -the “base” of a mountain or an underwater wave -when it is not simply an expression of energy. If Min Jung-Yeon has often sought to make contraries meet through her depicted subject matters, she has now let go to express them in the differentiation of the gesture itself. A new strength emanates, an unbounded power thatarises like a storm. Or a delicate breeze that carries you…

The exhibition’s title comes from a comment published on the forum of a virtual game, which goal is to reach Utopia – by the attribution of points for finding butterflies in desolated urban landscapes.
If the insect is the symbol of metamorphosis, from hatching to blossoming beautifully, the rainbow refers to an immaterial, splendid and fleeting reality, to a desire that cannot be fulfilled. It suggests a bridge between two elements of different nature such as the physical and spiritual worlds. Thus, “I found a rainbow butterfly once” convenes- in a poetic and simple manner- the singular instant, the experience, the memory, the dream…

The composition of a hormone that makes people love, a crystal structure and its parallel among the stars, deep web and mandalas: Lyndi Sales borrows from the scientific and technological imaging as well as from symbolic representations. She questions, juxtaposes, looks, dreams to confront fears and fascinations, marvelling and horror. Through her two or three-dimensional works, the artist pushes back the frontiers of the visible to reach a better comprehension of the world. Her exploration of social realities comes with a spiritual quest.
For years now, she has been finding some of her inspiration in the cutting-edge spatial research while also learning from Buddhist thinking. Navigating between microcosmos and macrocosms, between the tangible and the immaterial, a number of her works are looking to give shape to dualities such as light/obscurity, masculine/feminine, life/death. A desire for balance, visions and utopias or even other possible realms characterizes Lyndi Sales’ universe which is profoundly shaped by her environment: a highly-contrasted South-African reality where innovation and material deprivation live side by side.
Her language is the language of beauty, such as the captivating beauty of the butterfly that embodies the possibility of mutation.

b e i n g    –   l o o k i n g
Our relationship to the world starts in our own body. A “Primary tool”, its constitution determines our capacities to perceive and interact with the “exterior”. Sight, in all its functional and psychological complexity has been for a long time at the core of Lyndi Sales’ work that questions her own perception of and about the world:  functioning of the eye*, visions of cosmos**and society***, drugs and religion as ways to access a broader vision****. This need to see further probably comes from personal tragedy: the loss of her father in an unexplained plane crash, the theme of her first exhibition in France. Thus, In transit (2009) highlighted notions of fragility, chance and rebirth.
Life experience, a need or a fact are always at the origin of the artist’s artworks.
* Audience, installation presented at the Bon Marché Rive Gauche, 2014, ** Uhuru (meaning« freedom » in Swahili), installation created for the Venise Biennial, 2011
*** Onthology, installation presented in Surveillance passive, Galerie Maria Lund, 2011, **** Moth to a flame, installation presented at Art Paris, 2015

s e a r c h i n g   to   k n o w   o n e s e l f
In its own way, the scientific world enables to see further, to fathom what escapes us.
A result of the conversations with researchers at the Texas A&M College of Engineering, the physical phenomenon of a plane passing through the sound barrier and the fragmented space left by its passage inspired Lyndi Sales to create the monumental mural work Chaos and flow, love and fear (2018).
The code of the human genome is the inspiration behind the Human genome tapestry, which composition in concentric circles recalls mandalas, symbols of the universe’s evolution and involution. The circle, a recurrent motif in the artist’s work, represents the entirety, the fulfillment, the unique, the resonance. Just as it suggests the links/connections between the big everything and the modest place human beings hold, between the rational world of science and the spiritual world.
The exploration of the link is also visible in the collages Pituitary gland and Oxytocin : I’m addicted to you. Respectively, “key body gland” and hormone that favours social interactions. The pituitary gland and oxytocin are evoked in a crystalline shape beaming with particularly luminous colours.
In large laser-cut cardboards entitled Love and fear, Lyndi Sales establishes a parallel between the areas of cosmic energies and those circulating between beings. She superimposes registers of quantum physics – gravitational attraction and expansion, matter and dark energies – to human feelings of attraction and repulsion. Matrix-networks with complex frames, sometimes organic, sometimes straight, dense or frail. The surfaces of the works are saturated with layers of many colours – as many strata of different emotions and their contraries.

d r e a m i n g   i n   d e p t h
One night, a dream inspired by a visit to the Paris Catacombs takes Lyndi Sales to a new world of Utopia, connectivity, love, sadness and abandonment. A transcendental experience or trip caused by a drug? Left puzzled, the artist questions herself and gives shape to dreams in an ensemble of hand-embroidered tapestries. (A place where I found moments of …: Catacomb dream map). Constructions, labyrinths, models and symbols are juxtaposed. This newly created cartography presents similarities with her series of drawings inspired by an aerial vision of transformations caused by the mining activities in South Africa. The Erosion drawings tell the story of the precarious destiny of the Zama-Zamas, illegal minors rummaging abandoned mines in the hopes of finding gold.
As for the eponymous work of the exhibition, it presents a weave where the central thread expands in winding lines. Free deviations, they evoke Internet browsing or virtual games where the browser /gamer ends up discovering things beyond their search field. Just like the unconscious in a dream, diving into the Internet can lead to shifts and surprising contiguities. Lyndi Sales reminds us that parallel worlds – virtual or dreamlike – are also fields of an expanded reality.

Going from the specific to reach the universal, Lyndi Sales explores fundamental structures and symbols through a diversity of cultures and fields of knowledge. The chosen shape, medium and technique carry as much signification as the subject matter.
Chance, hope, transformation, chaos, harmony, movement, observation, quest for love and infinity… Lyndi Sales’ rhizome-like work embraces very widely to show the impermanence and fragility of fundamental conditions. I found a rainbow butterfly once explores the multivocity of a whole and offers a unitary vision of existence.

b a c k g r o u n d
Lyndi Sales has been widely exhibited for over fifteen years (United States, Europe, Australia, Asia and South Africa). In 2011, she represented South Africa in the 54^th Venice Biennale.
Her works are part of a large number of prestigious collections: The National Gallery of Art, Washington; New York Public Library, NYC; Library of Congress, Washington DC; McGill University, Montréal; Arthur and Matta Jaffe Collection, Florida Atlantic University; Jack Ginsberg artist book collection, South Africa; Ernst & Young, ABSA, Telkom (South Africa) and Red Bull, Austria.
In France, Lyndi Sales is represented in the collections of the FRAC Normandie Rouen and the collection of the Société Générale.
Lyndi Sales has also created a considerable number of monumental commissions for private and public clients: Mandela stone installation for Norton Rose in Johannesburg in 2012, Satellite telescope for Cape Town University in 2013, an installation for Facebook (Johannesburg, 2017) and the mural work Chaos and flow, love and fear for Texas A&M College of Engineering (Brian, 2018).
The Galerie Maria Lund has welcomed three personal exhibitions of the artist (In transit – 2009; Passive surveillance – 2012 ; Lumière préternaturelle – 2014) and has shown her works in several fairs (KIAF – Séoul, 2017 ; Art Paris, 2015 ; Art on paper – Brussels, 2013; Drawing Now - Paris, 2011; Slick art fair – Paris, 2011; Chic dessin – Paris, 2010).
During the summer 2014, her installation Audience was presented at the Bon Marché Rive Gauche, Paris.

French artist tandem Martinet & Texereau, author of four-handed drawings, goes against the traditional vision of art as the expression of the artist’s personality: Here one plus one equals three, for the end goal is not to add up two individual styles but to create a third one.  The focus of the work is daily life, which our jaded gaze takes in so little, if at all, and in particular the daily life of housing and its shared areas. In their most recent drawings  Martinet & Texereau  make an inventory of the volumes and nooks of buildings with their entry halls, tiling, skirting boards, and closed doors, where time appears to have stopped. Even the plants in their automatic sprinkling pots and well-groomed exterior small gardens seem to exude lifelessness despite the growing vegetation. All is clean and contained. The pencil strokes act like a scalpel feeling tissue, learning its surface before breaking into it… Each detail (joints, veins, textures) is rendered with a fascinating combination of surgical detachment and sensuality. The framing is tight and the focus perfect, like that of a microscope examining a specimen. The universe conveyed by Martinet & Texereau is evocative of New Objectivity, without the biting humor. There seems to be a touch of surrealism in these works; humanity may be invisible but it is not absent.

E S B E N   K L E M A N N
I do things that seem impossible at first…because it’s ALWAYS interesting! My accumulated experience throws ideas into the void and challenges me to give them material life. Thus speaks Esben Klemann, a Danish multi-artist who approaches all media with a playful attitude, constantly attempting to subjugate all materials, following the rule of “systematic uncertainty”.

The exhibition will show works that evolve around imaginary architectures in metamorphosis: the video Sketch 2016, an ensemble of drawings in pen and in stoneware, one of his favored mediums. Esben Klemann’s work functions according to a logic of ideas and form associations: Lines and structures undulate, come up, come down, wind, densify, slide and throw themselves in the void, erasing themselves in order to go back immediately. All is potentially in mutation in a movement where the unpredictable becomes an important element. His interventions and sculptures in concrete space graft themselves, parasite-like, and inspire themselves of what is given to take it elsewhere… In that manner, Esben Klemann is really from his time, where the desire to master and pursue an idea have given way to the quest of the unknown, even a form of bowing down to the forces that escape us. Observation then allows to better seize them until they escape again…

Esben Klemann’s constructions are contemporary, poetic and amusing follies, snapshots of an omnipotent freedom.

S H O I

Since the creation of her drawing series “être” (being) (2011), a small armless legless voluptuous but headless woman has appeared in the universe of Shoi, a Korean performer and artist. These scenes drawn in pencil which are Dionysian, crude, funny and tender reveal an intimate world rendered with a mix of naturalist precision and simple contouring. The human being is closely linked to nature to the extent of finding its prolongation in hybrid anthropomorphisms and woman-animal or woman-vegetal-mineral accumulations. Corals, sea anemone, jelly fish, fish or turtles inhabit this submarine world where the armless and legless woman takes light steps, moves by turtle back or becomes an integral part of these “tiered pieces” that recall both the universes of Bernard Palissy and Hieronymus Bosch. Contrary to the legless and armless woman who has no head, the animals do have theirs. .. As a sexual voluptuous being, the headless and legless woman breathes, gives herself or bows to nature and gets carried away in the currents and growths that form her shelter. Her absorption can be so total that only the tip of a breast is visible…. In one drawing a big solitary gleaming jellyfish slithers gracefully in the semi-obscurity – probably the image of a libertarian and liberating journey… Sub-marine here meaning sub-conscious.

Panorama of a personal mythology, whichever the medium, Shoi’s works allow to live again, exorcize and surpass, go beyond one’s past a past or a difficulty – in the spirit of a shamanic ritual.