XAVIER MARY
Born 1982 in Liège
Lives and works in Bruxelles
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2018
- Dance Floor of Emergency, NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen (DE)
2017
- Kiss the Girls, Ultrastudio, Pescara (IT)
- The Enigma of Steel, Galerie Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg (GDL)
- Snake Driver, Galerie Albert Baronian, Bruxelles (B)
2014
- Over Drive, Galerie Albert Baronian, Bruxelles (B)
2013
- Iron Triangle, APT Institute, New York (USA)
2012
- Petrolatum, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin (DE)
- Eat The Magic Lions, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, (DE)
2010
- Game Over, Galerie Baroninan-Francey, Bruxelles, (B)
- Ortho Graphe, Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin, (DE)
2009
- One Man Show Art Bruxelles, Galerie Baronian-Francey, Bruxelles, (B)
- SPECIFIC PATTERN, Galerie ESPACE UHODA, Liège, (B)
2008
- Monographie d’artiste Arts 00+8, La Médiatine, Bruxelles, (B)
2007
- AKA 47 , Lx5 Homebase, Luxembourg-Hollerich, (GDL)
2006
- A4 Highway Ravers, Palais des Beaux Arts, Bruxelles, (B)
DUO AND TRIO EXHIBITIONS
2017
- We have the same Scale, duo exhibition with Eva L'Hoest, Mélange, Cologne (DE)
- Daisyworld of Mordor Land, Komplot,duo exhibition with ssaliva, Bruxelles (B)
2016
- Xo of excess, duo project + day-rave, with ssaliva, Exoexo, Paris (FR)
2015
- XMSL, duo exhibition with Simon Laureyn, Galerie Geukens & Devil, Knokke (B)
2007
- Gantz Graf’, duo exhibition with Yves Coussement, Witte Zaal, Gent, (B)
- Mise en doute, duo exhibition with Marcel Berlanger, Bruxelles, (B)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2018
- Résurgence, Espace 251 Nord, Liège
2017
- Plant B, Curated by Komplot & Toke Lykkeberg, Parc de la Fonderie, Molenbeek (B)
- Metallifère, CALCB, Centre d’art Contemporain du Luxembourg Belge, Buzenole (B)
2016
- Les Sept Périls Spectraux, Galerie Arnaud Deschin, Paris (FR))
- From Here to Eternity, La Maison Particulière, Bruxelles (B)
- Panorama, BPS 22, Charleroi (B)
- Dust as a new value, Villa Arson, Nice (FR)
- The Emotional Junkie and the Cyborg Love, Musée d'art contemporain d'Anvers, Anvers (B)
- Les lèvres nues, DOC, Paris (FR)
- The Green Ray, Wilkinson Gallery, Londres (GB)
2015
- Stay Focused, Cookie Butcher, Anvers (B)
- Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, The Stable, Waregem (B)
- Prix de la commission des arts de Wallonie, Musée Lanchelevici, La Louvière (B)
- First summer show, Galerie Yoko Uhoda, Liège (B)
- Quand fondera la neige où ira le blanc, Galerie les filles du calvaire, Paris (FR)
- Museo delle Palme, Museo delle Palme, Palermo (IT)
- To blow smoke in order to heal, Galerie Albert Baronian, Bruxelles (B)
2014
- The square rectangle, Kunsthal Kade, Amersfoort (NL)
- Scoglio DiCielo, L'A project space, Palermo (IT)
- Trailers for the Future, Galerie Yoko Uhoda, Liège (B)
- L'art belge. Entre rêves et réalités, Musée des beaux - arts, Neuchâtel (CH)
- Le Canal, Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen, Anvers (B)
- Encounter at the Boundary, CC De Kollebloem, Puurs (B)
- Acid Rain, Island, Bruxelles (B)
- Bande à Part, CAB Art Center, Bruxelles (B)
2013
- Defining Space, Die Bastei, Cologne (DE)
- Batterie, Espace 251 Nord, Liège (B)
2012
- Vinyl in the studio, Mu.ZEE, Oostende (B)
- Art in the City, Art Bruxelles 2012, Bruxelles, B)
- Who’s afraid by red, yellow and blue ?, La Maison Rouge, Paris, (FR)
- Pop Up, Musé d'Ixelle, Bruxelles (B)
2011
- Célébration(s), Iselp, Bruxelles, (B)
- 100 DRAWINGS AGAINST THE VIETNAM WAR, Le commisariat, Paris, (F)
- 100 DRAWINGS AGAINST THE VIETNAM WAR, Komplot, Bruxelles, (B)
- Nouvel Art de la Belgique III, Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin, (DE)
- Family Plot, Galerie Baronian-Francey, Bruxelles, (B)
- Pole Gry / Le Terrain de jeu, Zachęta National Galerie,Varsovie (PL)
2010
- Nouvel Art de la Belgique II, Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne, (DE)
- Enlightenment, L40 BERLIN, Berlin, (DE)
- Nouvel Art de la Belgique, Galerie Christian Nagel, Anvers, (B)
- OUT OF CONTROL 7ème Biennale de la Photographie de Liège, ESPACE UHODA, Liège, (B)
2009
- Dialogique Parc, Bétonsalon, Paris (F)
- Nothing is permanent, La centrale électrique, centre Européen d’art contemporain, Bruxelles, (B)
2008
- Un-scene, WIELS centre d’art contemporain ,Bruxelles, (B)
Curateurs : Devrim Bayard, Charles Gohy, Dirck Snauwaert
- Harder Than It Looks, centre d’art La maison George Pompidou, (FR)
- Prix de La jeune sculpture, Musée en Plein Air du Sart-Tilman, (B)
- Sculptural Proposition, Galerie Frédéric Desimpel, Bruxelles, (B)
- Utopia-Dystopia, W3 Kunst centrum, Vlissingen, (NL)
Résidencies & awards
2013-2015
Résidence Komplot, Bruxelles (B)
2015
Résidence Museo delle Palme, Palermo (IT)
Prix de la commission des arts de Wallonie, Musée Lanchelevici (selected artist), La Louvière (B)
2014
AIR Antwerpen, Anvers (B)
2013
Résidence APT Studios, Brooklyn, NY (USA)
2011
Résidence Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (DE)
2009
- Laureate Prix Jeune Artiste, Parlement de la communauté Française de Belgique
- Second Laureate lly prize, Art Bruxelles, Bruxelles (B)
2005
- Laureate Prix médiatine 2005
The work of Liège-born, Brussels-based contemporary artist Xavier Mary (1982) oscillates between post-industrial sculpture and post- apocalyptic realism, his smart and street-savvy installations existing as powerful poetry for the motorised age. Underpinned by a fascination with all things car-related, his practice celebrates the country’s automotive obsession in all its glory, repurposing disused and disregarded highway stalwarts to create a damning discourse of the modern and motorised civilisation.
The work of Brussels-based artist Xavier Mary demonstrates a hybrid formal language, all while retaining a clear-cut sculptural aesthetic. The tonality of his pieces seems to be adrift somewhere between the ancient, the brand newand yet-to-come. Past, present and future are entangled in non-linear ways that are rather exemplary of the contemporary artistic climate.
Let’s admit it. Our adieu to modernism has been an impossible farewell, somewhat comparable to a stretched attempt at breaking up with your beloved one while still sharing the same bed. Even after the self-proclaimed end of Western history (the end of art, the end of styles, and so on), the spectre of the past still keeps on haunting our present moment. And we can’t get rid of it.The Party is over, the afterparty was a bit lame, so now what?
Art has moved on from the historical avant-garde to the historicised avant-garde, with a postmodern interval full of pastiches and ironic winks. The artist is now left with the sandbox of art history, an unstable territory to play in or travel through.The great compass may begone, but we still keep on travelling, in a retrofuturistic way, back to the future.
This ‘modernism 2.0.’ or 'modernism reloaded', which goes by many other names (‘altermodernism’, ‘metamodernism’, etc.), is what we find crystallised in the work of Xavier Mary. Mary's position as an artist is one of constant negotiation between different regimes, connecting tradition and avant-garde, sincerity and irony, past and future, actual and virtual.Not only do we find this exemplified in his monumental sculptures and installations, but also in otherartistic gestures, playing around with his own signature and initials.
So perhaps the machine aesthetic, once declared dead, isn’t so rusty after all. Its second life is getting shape through a new kind of objectivism, arising from the ashes of its predecessor like a phoenix. After decades of rapid technological development and transhumanist ideologies, we are still left with material, tangibleobjects surrounding us. They are not so much emblems of nostalgia or melancholy, asthe sites of resistance and sovereignty. Everyday objects are the reminders of a primary scene in modern art; that of the ready-made, the trouvaille.
From hauntology to ontology; only a small step, amere slip of the tongue. We suddenly turnto the transcendence of the object, its autonomous existence as a thing, insteadofbeing justa tool, instrumentor device. The object is folded back on itself, as a kind of short-circuit. It suddenly falls out of place, it is there where it is not. Precisely what Xavier Mary does by transforming highway guardrails into entangled rings, or turning road lights into Frank Stella-like canvases and Platonic solids, shifting the attention to the object’s inexhaustible presence.
— Pieter Vermeulen
FROM REFERENCE TO REPETITION, be Magazine #18, July 2005
Texte by J. Emil Sennewald
© Xavier Mary 2017