Book launch 9/12/2023 at 4pm

Exhibition 12/11/2023 - 16/12/2023

Friday & Saturday from 11am - 6pm and by appointment

Iconostasis, the book, will be published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name featuring works by Gianluca Cosci and Sébastien Forthomme at Queens Brussels. Besides images of the exhibited works and photographs of the exhibition, it includes reflective texts by Ernest Van Buynder, honorary president of the MuHKA and curator Lisa Deckers and a dialogue between curator and both artists.

The book thus shows a selection of their most recent works and highlights both affinities and differences between the two artists. Conceived as a dialogue between two unique artistic personalities, the exhibition and book offer an enriching visual exchange.

The title, Iconostasis, refers to the Eastern Christian tradition in Byzantine churches of a solid screen of stone, wood, or metal, usually separating the sanctuary from the nave. The iconostasis had originally been some sort of simple partition between the altar and the congregation. It then became a row of columns, and the spaces between them were eventually filled with icons.

Quite surprisingly we do not find any other reference to Christianity or faith in general in this book. The silent power conveyed by the artworks evokes a feeling of being mesmerized each in its own individual manner,  reminiscent of Colour Field paintings. Through their elegiac tones, the artworks draw viewers into their own sphere, inviting closer encounters with their physicality which become both a boundary and a contact point between immanence and the sublime. In that respect the artists’ creations function as a sort of laic iconostases that project us into introspective and existential meditations.

Biography

Gianluca Cosci (1970, Italy) graduated in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Between 1999 and 2011, he lived and worked in London, where he obtained a master's degree in Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Art and a master's degree in Art and Design from the Institute of Education, University of London. In 2011, he moved to Brussels, where he currently lives and works. Between 2019 and 2023, he conducted a PhD in Arts at LUCA School of Art/KU Leuven entitled 'The Denied Image: Art Interventions Between Iconoclasm and Institutional Critique'.

Sébastien Forthomme (1976, Belgium) studied at the Agnès Varda School of Photography in Brussels. Between 2008 and 2015, he was a photographer for the Royal Monnaie Theatre. He then embarked on artistic research and exhibited in Brussels and Amsterdam, among other places.