One takes half a container of mixed pottery and porcelain from grandmother's "wunderkammer" and half a container of one's own pottery, covers it with a sauce of lively glaze, bakes it in the oven ... et voilà: la condition humaine. Thus, in a satirical programme, the recipe for a "real" Yves Malfliet might read. Of course, you then overlook the artistry of the maker, the eloquence and, above all, the stratification of the work. Malfliet's images are intriguing, unexpected and anecdotal. His works are theatrical and often alienatingly ambiguous: the mask of amusement often conceals a lot of sarcasm, bitter reality and narrative absurdity. Malfliet often uses "bibelots" who figure as actors in his visual language. His works require a relativising approach, because with his spontaneous, eclectic, improvisational style, Yves Malfliet positions himself as a 3D "cabaret artist", where the works take on the status of a contemporary fairy tale with opera clichés, balancing between naivety, the sacred and the mystical, where the conceptual, narrative power surpasses the craftsmanship.
For this exhibition, the artist created a series of completely new works, a first. Creations that are sometimes shockingly beautiful, narrative and complex, but also alienating, unforgettable and confusing . Yves Malfliet takes us into his unrestrained theatrical world. This experience is authentic, personal and extremely unique. The spectator is invited to empathise with the artist's brain, eclectic concoctions: a rock with a lonely chair, idyllic gardens that feel like ceramic candy, meteorites with angel wings, abstract combinations of volcanic elements with details of Chinese blue and/or golden relics... Yves Malfliet likes to go into artistic "overdrive", is not afraid of a touch of anti-aesthetics and confronts with "pleasure" the viewer with a nevertheless wondrous- and unique-, highly original world of experience. Yves Malfliet positions himself within contemporary art as an "Einzelgänger", someone who radically does his "thing" against the current. Even the use of a medium such as ceramics, which for most people rather belongs in an artisanal context, is an extra "trigger", an experience that shows new possibilities within contemporary art ...