Materia Nova, touching what you (don’t) understand

There are moments when material no longer serves mere form, but begins to speak for itself. Where the artist is no longer master of the material, but becomes an apprentice. ‘MATERIA NOVA’ brings together four artists who work precisely within that field of tension. The works by Peggy Wauters, Laura de Coninck, Sylvie Martens and Malvine Marichal testify to a fundamental reversal. Matter sings loose from the familiar. Reveals itself as something new, as something that invites us to look again, to smell, to feel.

In this exhibition, “MATERIA NOVA” acts not as technological innovation, but as a shift in sensibility. It is matter that begins to behave differently, idiosyncratic, sensory, unruly. It eludes the logic of production and control. Each work acts as a layer of meaning in which matter finds itself, drawing the viewer into a slow, tangible transformation. These artists work with matter as with a living language, a fluid presence.

Materia Nova, a living archive

Materia Nova is neither a nostalgic plea nor an uncritical glorification of craft. It is an invitation to slow down, a plea for a sensory openness that allows us to see the world around us with new eyes. At a time when everything is becoming increasingly digital and elusive, these artists consciously choose the tangible, the fragrant, the fragile.

They invite us to connect with the physical reality of matter, to not only look at it, but also feel it, smell it and experience it. By elevating the everyday and making the often unnoticed visible, they show that matter is much more than a shell. It is a living archive, a poetic presence that, if we open up to it, can teach us something about our own relationship with the world.

This requires attention, patience and, above all, a willingness to listen to the silent story of things.

Peggy Wauters’ sublime fragility

Peggy Wauters creates worlds that are at once tender and disturbing. In this exhibition, she shows fragile ceramic and porcelain objects, floral compositions, erotic panties on coat hangers and miniature landscapes in wooden blocks. Under bells sit porcelain birds with golden legs.

Her work is steeped in the grotesque and the absurd, balancing between beauty and horror. It raises questions about identity, power and religion, and invites a sensory confrontation with the subconscious. With Wauters, matter is never neutral. It breathes, provokes, seduces.

The language of smell and memory at Laura De Coninck

At Laura De Coninck, art becomes a sensory experience. Her sculptures and paintings are not only to see, but also to smell – snatches of scent that awaken memories.

A large breast sculpture, together with two smaller forms, carries the intimate scent of breast milk, which can be brought to life again and again via a special perfume.

In front of KMSKA heritage, De Coninck lays down fragile petals, shaped in clay and coloured in Yves Klein blue and white. They capture the scent of the museum, like echoes of a past you can gently touch.

In l’œil et l’esprit, she lets blue paintings breathe, infused with her own carefully composed scent. Finally, with Saudade she translates the longing for what is past into a new clay object, subtly diffusing the melancholy of a scent that brings memory and heart together.

Trained with fragrance artist Peter de Cupere and trained at perfume house Givaudan, Laura De Coninck weaves scent and image together into one: an art that is not only seen, but deeply felt.

Layers of air as painting by Sylvie Martens

Sylvie Martens does not paint objects, but their breath. Clouds, light, shadow, transient phenomena take shape in slow layers of oil paint on marble, wood, chamois leather or wax. Her work is in keeping with the luminist tradition of Emile Claus, but also refers to Constable’s cloud studies or Turner’s drama. The choice of fragile, uneven supports reinforces the transience of the image. Her paintings are at once powerful and fragile, like temporary encounters between colour and light. She invites a contemplative look at nature … and at our place in it.

The inertia of the object at Malvine Marichal

At Malvine Marichal, thread and textiles speak. She embroiders with black, white and red threads on recycled fabrics and papers, often incorporated into old boxes or frames. Her work is small in scale but large in intimacy. Each object exudes memory and slowness. The repetitive handwork, the visible stitches, the weathered materials: they suggest a search for balance, beauty and meaning. In her world, logic gives way to intuition, speed to stillness. Marichal’s work invites slow viewing, a rarity in our time.

– Text: Yves Joris, art critic –