Witness

The curator Jean-François Declercq is delighted to present the solo show ‘Witness’ of the Brussels-based sculptor Alexandra Leyre Mein at Atelier Jespers during the OFF Parcours of Art Brussels Fair 2022.

The Dutch-Belgian artist will reveal a series of penetrating sculptures, exploring the human body and mind, unveiling the beauty and brutality, the ethereal and palpable. With an interpretative approach, she questions the passage of time, memories, dreams, and emotions, shaping live-sized figures directly in Hydrostone, on which she adjoins polished surfaces of recuperated marble, rebar, rust, glass, forming busts, horse legs or tree trunks.

She moulds sensual bodies without faces, powerful faces without bodies, and mysterious masks. To leave the viewer a greater freedom of interpretation she works without preliminary vision of completed sculptures to fully grasp the subconscious part of her mind.

The heads emanate solitude and silence, their polished pristine faces seem to witness our behavior and what will be remembered by history. Other hybrid figures seem bursting out in contorted movements and struggling between movement and stability, sensuality and tensions. By shape and textures, the work seems to originate both from an ancient and a contemporary era.

With a strong autobiographical aspect, the sculptor uses a palette of subtle colours, reminiscent of common minerals or oxidized metals. The unfinished aspect gives the feeling that they are still in the process of emerging or have started to decay, a duality of interpretation distinctive of her work.

Her work is imprinted by the Renaissance sculptor Bernini and his work on movements, as well by the mysticism and power of the Sub-Saharan Africa’s animist tradition. Contorted bodies with visceral and whirling emotions refer to Francis Bacon’s paintings, while sensuality and delicate rawness are inspired by Camille Claudel’s work. The more graphical elements are inspired by the seminal work of Brancusi’s contemporaries.

Born in 1979 in Brussels, Alexandra Leyre Mein graduated as a fashion designer at Royal Academy of Antwerp before switching to visual art in 2008. She has been awarded several artist residencies across the world and her work has been shown internationally in Paris at Palais Iéna, in New York at Anton Kern gallery NYC, New House for Contemporary Art, SVA Westside Gallery, in Belgium at Maison Particulière, Botanique and White house gallery, etc. Her sculptures are also part of large private collections such as Belfius Bank collection, Joshua Rechnitz, Servais Family collection, Solages collection, Taittinger collection, etc.

Besides her sculptural practice, she designs sets and costumes for renowned dancers and choreographers among others, Damien Jalet, Erna Omarsdottir and Qudus Onikeku. Her creations have been shown at Louvre in Paris, Melbourne International Festival, Tokyo International Arts Festival, Festival d’Avignon, Palazzo Fortuny.