Hopstreet Gallery is pleased to announce, in collaboration with Yolande De Bontridder, the upcoming exhibition ‘Cast in Eternity’, featuring the works of eight artists. Sara Bjarland, Thorsten Brinkmann, Michel François, atelier lachaert dhanis, Nicolás Lamas, Lucie Lanzini, Mostafa Saifi Rahmouni and Tinus Vermeersch.

Bronze… an amazing material of which the first objects date back more than 2800 years before our era. Since its discovery, it has fascinated artists with the beauty of its texture and patinas, and above all, with the surprising way in which it is at once hard and tender, allows duplication and yet retains uniqueness, remains untouched but can also oxidise. Even today, this mysterious composite material of copper and tin arouses lively interest. This is demonstrated by the eight artists, some still young, others already established, who have been brought together by Hopstreet Gallery, in cooperation with Yolande De Bontridder, for the new exhibition Cast in Eternity.

Sara Bjarland, Thorsten Brinkmann, Michel François, atelier lachaert dhanis, Nicolás Lamas, Lucie Lanzini, Mostafa Saifi Rahmouni and Tinus Vermeersch share a common fascination with the craft of materials and with the way a material can lend great beauty to even the most insignificant object. Aside from Michel François and Tinus Vermeersch, who rely more on the idea of the object, they all work intensively with recycled materials. These include everyday utensils and things found in nature – the kind of things we no longer care about or that we forget, abandon or throw away. And all eight artists share, with a little more or a little less straightforwardness, a vision of our society and of the relationship between man and nature that is laced with humour and mockery. By transforming the objects into a poetic and often absurd vision of our world, these artists attempt to expose the pain of our times, but without pointing an accusatory finger. Michel François’ peanuts or Sara Bjarland’s fine branches, Mostafa Saifi Rahmouni’s chunks of bread or Tinus Vermeersch’s hairballs, the pieces from Thorsten Brinkmann and Lucie Lanzini’s studio or Lachaert and Dhanis’ leftover boards: all these – often humble – traces of our lives are transformed, thanks to the artists’ imagination and their translation into bronze, into works with great evocative power. They’re beautiful, tender and ironic.

When we look more closely, however, we experience a strange ambivalence. Do we keep smiling or are we upset? It is as if these banal objects, these trinkets, suddenly acquire a special power through the bronze. A power that’s sometimes gentle, sometimes wry; a power that turns us upside down, that moves us, and that makes us rethink our view of life, our future.

Isabelle Pouget

Yolande De Bontridder has been active in the field of contemporary art since 1993 as an artistic advisor, exhibition curator and collector.

Yolande has had the Archetype gallery for over 12 years. In 2018, she participated, as a collector, in the Private Choices exhibition at La Centrale for Contemporary Art in Brussels. In 2020, she curated the exhibition of contemporary sculptures in the Villa Carpentier by architect Victor Horta and its park in Ronse. In 2021, she became the president of the Cercle des Amis de La Cambre.