The Four Feet Experience

It had been a long time that Vincent Glowinski and I wanted to work together. Vincent lives between Belgium and France, and is also very well known as a street artist under the name Bonom. I have always loved his huge paintings on walls in Brussels.

In Autumn 2021, Vincent and I were invited by curator Adrien Grimmeau to do a 10-day art residency, and to exhibit our work at MAGMA—Triennial of Contemporary Art in Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve. I usually work small and Vincent works on a huge scale. He suggested that we work not on a wall, but on an 2.7m x 11m sheet of paper. Our space to exhibit was in an underground car park, under the very nice Museum L in Louvain-la-Neuve. We decide to “park” our drawing, 10 days is short and yet long in the same time; we had to dive in, without fear.

We talked a lot about life and death outside of our drawing hours (we had this beautiful concentration: listening, feeling the movement of each other). We both have a link to a shamanic way of working, channeling whatever is there. We danced on the paper, and drew with our feet (and hands, of course). We had to keep our socks on otherwise we would hurt the skin of our feet). We used the sheets of paper like a stage, and thought of different ways of coming to the paper. Where to start, how to start. We would fold the sheets in two, to make a ghost print.

We worked with black charcoal and the white of the page. Light and shadows. We made 9 large drawings. It was one of my strongest and most beautiful partnerships. There was a lot of respect, kindness and intensity. We both said that it changed something in our way of working. I feel so grateful to Vincent and to Andrian.

Photos by Théodore Bauthier.