Carte blanche aux artistes éditeur.rice.s : Bernard Villers, Alexia de Visscher & Raphaël Van Lerberghe (A.R.D.V.L)

As part of the “a minima” exhibition, the Wittockiana is giving carte blanche to three Brussels-based artist-publishers: Bernard Villers, Alexia de Visscher, and Raphaël Van Lerberghe.

All three explore the resources of the minimalist book: a fold, a color, a word can be enough to make a book. Running counter to mass-market publishing logic, their pared-down publications shift our perspective and question the materiality, economy, and very meaning of the book as an object.

For Bernard Villers, the fold makes the book. Blurring the lines between painting, publishing, and minimal gesture, he focuses particularly on the act of folding. He successively founded the publishing houses Le Remorqueur and Le Nouveau Remorqueur, which became the primary medium for his artistic work.

While the early publications might be described as “pictorial,” those of Le Nouveau Remorqueur reveal a more conceptual approach: folded pages as supports for text, simple formats, accessible books intended to circulate. Through its elementary forms, modesty, and restraint, the work expresses great sensitivity and genuine complexity.

A.R.D.V.L. Editions was born out of the collaboration between Alexia de Visscher and Raphaël Van Lerberghe. At the intersection of art and publishing, their house explores the architecture of the book and its possible futures

Alexia de Visscher has developed a practice centered on the book, editorial design, and research into the processes that shape its contemporary uses. Raphaël Van Lerberghe, for his part, plays with transparency, disappearance, and overwriting. He blurs the lines and shifts the gaze beyond certainties. A.R.D.V.L. publications are punctuated with images, phrases, or drawn words: each element acts as a “minimal insert” that opens up a field of multiple resonances.

Opening Tuesday 31.03, 6pm
Wednesdays > Sundays, 10am > 5pm
until Sunday 21.06

Location
Wittockiana
23 rue du Bemel
1150 Brussels (BE)

More info about Bernard Villers.