Lionel Estève

Meticulous and subtle, colourful and light in form, Lionel Estève’s sculptural practice is also remarkable in its ability to respond intuitively to the constraints of exhibition spaces in terms of morphology, light and even atmosphere. Using the contrast between the two large halls of the MACS, which offer his intervention a specific architectural context, the artist has devised a visit that is articulated around several juxtapositions: dryness and humidity, hot and cold, light and darkness. The natural landscape is immediately evoked by the alternation of days, seasons and climates, and also serves to evoke a mental and emotional dimension through the alchemical and formal language of the materials. The pleasure Lionel Estève takes in manual work is revealed by the stones, plants, plastics, tulles and numerous odds and ends, garnered during excursions into the countryside or urban strolls, which the artist carefully incorporates into his work in the studio or the actual exhibition space. This same pleasure is also evident in the tenderness of certain sculptural gestures, such as embroidering around pebbles and gilding the leaves of dried plants. The thousands of fine, slightly iridescent cables, shaped into droplets or tears and arranged all around the walls, offer visitors the experience of an immersive installation, which has been specially designed by Lionel Estève for the MACS, where emotion is combined with perception, introspection with the monumental, and the praise of beauty with poetic meandering. 

Lionel Estève was born in 1967 in Lyon (France). He lives and works in Brussels.