CFC – förlag

The Hinterland photographic series is a long-term project exploring the different realities of a territory. These images show marginal places, fragmented transition zones, abandoned structures; spaces between proximity and distance, presence and absence, natural and artificial. They also have a fictional potential: a territory beyond the visible or known, this strange hinterland where life begins and ends. Hinterland frees the echo of the world in its faults, such, hollow, a silent memory of oneself, an interior hinterland. If schizoidism is the inability to realise one's own loneliness, Hinterland would be a reflection of it; in and out of the world.

Text in English, French and Dutch.

This superbly illustrated colouring and activities book for children is inspired by the city of Brussels and its eclectic architecture. When the author, Gwen Guégan lived in Brussels, she drew many facades of houses, sometimes remarkable, sometimes simple. She had fun re-composing the city, grouping the houses regardless of their geographical location but associating them according to her whim.

The playful character of Edgar the Fox (an animal appearing more and more in the capital today) serves as a guide and takes the young readers through an atypical and nocturnal walk in the empty city. He encourages them to colour, draw, complete and recognise the most emblematic elements of the city. Learning to look at the city to take ownership of it by being creative is one of the goals of this book. An appendix allows the most curious or their parents to complete their knowledge on the essential architectural elements of the city crossed throughout the story and know their address to see them in real life if they wish.

CENTRALE presents BXL UNIVERSEL II: multipli.city, a multidisciplinary exhibition and events project in collaboration with 10 artists and 5 Brussels‐based organisations. On the occasion of its 15th anniversary, CENTRALE celebrates its city, its artists and its inhabitants with the project BXL UNIVERSEL II: multipli.city. This exhibition‐forum takes the form of a patchwork of singularities and paths, through the proposals of 10 artists who chose to live in Brussels – and includes not‐for‐profit organisations working within the city. Questioning both the strata of cosmopolitan Brussels, and the living‐together woven into it, the art centre opens its space to all, exchanging and sharing artistic and participative processes.

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From Art Nouveau to today's creations, via post‐war functionalism, this exhibition explores, among other things, the work of designers and the production of Belgian companies and publishing houses. Among these designers and producers are: Gustave Serrurier‐Bovy, Huib Hoste, Jacques Dupuis, Willy Van Der Meeren, Jules Wabbes, Maarten Van Severen, Meurop, Alain Gilles, Christophe Gevers.

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Maëlle Dufour creates complex systems. It seeks to question the progress at the heart of past eras, known but also those to come. The visual artist explores the traces of decadence as the beginnings of hope by questioning progress. She seeks to question the origin, memory and rebirth or sometimes absence. Are the ruins destroyed by the force of nature itself or by men in battles for territories? Can they be the foundations of a renewal? The viewer's physical confrontation with Maëlle Dufour's work can be unsettling because the size and weight of the pieces surpassing any human scale constantly remind us of the vulnerability of our own existence. Through her “sculpture‐systems”, she explores “an archaeology of waste”. These are valuable sources of information from past societies, physical legacies bequeathed to those yet to be born.

"I build in situ devices that destabilize the visitor, disrupt his senses and his environment, with the aim of questioning a reality that has always interested me: that of the destruction of humans by humans" (Maëlle Dufour) "Maëlle Dufour sculpts with the dizziness that each exhibition venue gives her. Its monuments of wood or earth, on the scale of excess, stun the viewer and lead him down adrift paths." - Adèle Santocono, head of the plastic arts sector of the province of Hainaut, BE

Exhibitions: Au MAAC in December 2021, À la Maison CFC 19 of November to 31 December 2021.

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"For several years I have been retrieving, buying and collecting old photographs, old identity portraits and family photographs from an earlier era. Little by little I started drawing with a Posca felt-tip painting pen, on the originals, initially just for the fun of it and without anything specific in mind. Later on, as I really liked that support, I continued to develop that approach by initiating a dialogue between the illustration and its photographic support. I started masking the faces, moving away from those rather set portraits to introduce a form of mystery, of uncanny. I derive my inspiration both from the effervescence in less affluent neighbourhoods and from the imagery of the sacred or in the tradition of masks in so-called 'primitive' societies. The sources merge, creating a universe which I can call mine. The sources merge, creating a universe that is both dream-like and a bit bashed up, inhabited by nice monsters and phantasmagoric creatures." - Mathieu Van Assche

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“Manon Bara paints, which does not necessarily mean producing paintings. Because Manon Bara's painting is not overly concerned with supports... because it is limitless, compulsive, gluttonous, charged with a desire too great to be contained. The best is therefore the one of today, which is made, which overflows, still wet, which stains and sticks to the fingers. It is a honey in which Jesus and Michael Jackson, a few dinosaurs and a host of little cats would be candied. Popular icons compacted without the slightest condescension or cruelty, cooked with the respect and devotion that cannibal practices imply. As a result, Manon Bara's universe becomes part of her, and it is impossible to disentangle the work and the artist [...].” - Benoît Dusart)

"My current paintings explore the animal side of man and the human side of the animal. What makes the animal human is first of all the glint of light in the eye. What makes a man or a woman an animal is the coat. [...] Even my gesture in painting is a bit wild. I like emotion, there has to be emotion." -

Manon Bara, interview with Hans Theys 

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For nearly 15 years, Adrien Lucca has been interested in colour and light, and the way we perceive them. His tools are natural or artificial light, pigments, everyday objects, glass, etc., which he uses in formats ranging from drawings to monumental installations.

His approach, which straddles the line between art and science, offers a real experience of research as well as perception. What colour do we see? What modifies it? Through this exploration, he questions our sense of reality, and opens up a real questioning of our gaze.

Since 2009, Adrien Lucca (born 1983 in Paris) has been developing a multidisciplinary work around colour and light that questions our perception of the physical world. In search of practical means of action to develop aesthetic experiments, he has set up a research and production laboratory where he conceives his works autonomously at the intersection of art and science. Adrien Lucca lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.

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First retrospective book of the artist Jot Fau, in the collection L’Impatient, a collection that welcomes the first books of artists, which anchor them in the present and the impatience of a future.

"They are broken, they still work'. The title of this recent work by Jot Fau could in itself sum up her practice. In her work there is a taste for things that remain, for nostalgic states and buried wounds. There is also strength and vulnerability, gentleness and resistance, and a soul that surrounds the bodies." - Coline Davenne, Montrouge Art fair

Jot Fau explores the theme of identity, in its most shifting form.

She gathers memories, snippets, images, thanks to which she composes narratives, clothes, installations of real or fictitious identities intersect, assemble and settle. In this way, the artist reveals the fragility of our constructions, as much as she reassures us thanks to the care she attaches to each element, with a protective softness.

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This book, illustrated with rare and original documents, tells the story of FARM PROD, a Brussels collective of cosmopolitan street artists. About 20 years ago, a few graphic communication students decided to share a working and living space by settling in an isolated farmhouse that would soon become a buzzing hive of creativity. This was the birth of one of the most original formations in urban art in recent years. From squats to artists' studios, we follow the progress of a close-knit team capable of regularly reinventing itself to meet the challenges of an artistic career that moves from spontaneous art to official commissions, without ever losing its singular aesthetic, its sense of friendship or its taste for celebration.

Text in English and French.