13 may 2025, Yves Joris
Materia Nova – When art abandons its form
There are exhibitions that open your eyes and then there are those that are experienced through your skin, nose, breath and memory. Materia Nova at TaLe Art Gallery belongs to the latter category. Here, it is not the artist who animates the material, but the material that breaks free from its usual function and begins to speak for itself. An exhibition as a slowly growing whisper and an invitation to touch, to slow down, even to come to a standstill — to forget what you thought you knew.
The title Materia Nova is not a noncommittal poetic motto. It is a compass, a guiding gesture. ‘New matter’ does not refer here to technological innovation, but to a renewed sensory awareness, a way of seeing in which material is no longer a neutral carrier, but a subject, an actor, a living archive. What follows is a journey through four artistic worlds, each as tangible as it is mysterious.
Peggy Wauters, No title, TaLe Art Gallery
Peggy Wauters – Baroque fragility and porcelain provocation
Peggy Wauters’ work enters like a paradox: fragile and grotesque, tender and unsettling. In her porcelain birds, erotic panties on hangers and miniature worlds under glass domes, a charged silence lingers. As if each object whispers: ‘Look again. Look differently’.
The porcelain surfaces are cold, but the symbolism is scorching. Religious references, repressed desires and human vulnerability become tangible entities. Matter is no passive medium here; it breathes, seduces and destabilises. Wauters creates a universe in which the familiar becomes grotesque and the grotesque unexpectedly intimate.
Laura De Coninck, 'Quintessence', 2024, TaLe Art Gallery
Laura De Coninck – The scent of memory
Whereas Wauters provokes, Laura De Coninck seduces with scent. Literally. Her sculptures and paintings are infused with carefully composed perfumes: the scent of breast milk, the echo of museum air, the sorrow of loss. Saudade.
Scent becomes image. A breast sculpture that smells of motherhood, clay flowers holding the heritage of the KMSKA in aroma, blue paintings that breathe. De Coninck transforms a museum visit into a ritual of remembrance. What you see is only half the story. The other half is experienced with your nose — and perhaps your heart.
Sylvie Martens, no title, 2025, TaLe Art Gallery
Sylvie Martens – Painting with light and breath
With Sylvie Martens, the canvas is a breathing surface. No objects or portraits, but phenomena: clouds, shadows, light spots. With slow layers of oil paint on unusual supports like marble, wax and chamois leather, she creates a painting that seems to want to escape time.
Her work is a meditation in pain and her choice of fragile materials emphasises the transience of all living things. Each painting is a moment of surrender to what is passing. She doesn't demand that you look — she invites you to pause. Literally, figuratively, existentially.
Malvine Marichal, no title, 2025, TaLe Art Gallery
Malvine Marichal – Embroidery as resistance to speed
While the outside world races by, Malvine Marichal embroiders. Black, white, red thread on old fabrics, recycled paper, weathered boxes. Each work exudes time, care and a search for meaning in the small things. Her objects are intimate, sometimes barely larger than a palm, yet they carry the weight of memory and stillness.
Marichal doesn’t work with bombast, but with a whisper. Her thread is a language. Her rhythm is slow. The visible stitches are not imperfections, but traces of presence. As if each thread is an attempt to hold on to meaning — or not to lose it.
A new pact with things
Materia Nova is not a eulogy to craft nor a nostalgic longing for a bygone era. It is a recalibration. What does matter mean in a world in which the intangible — the digital, the fleeting — seems to dominate? In this exhibition, matter is no longer passive: it demands attention, physicality, slowness.
Here, materials speak: not in words, but in breath, scent, texture, fragility. The four artists do not aim to provide answers, but pose questions that feel like a touch. What does it mean to smell a memory? To paint light as breath? To use thread as a diary?
Touching what you don’t (fully) understand
The subtitle of the exhibition may well be the key: touching what you (don’t) understand. It suggests a form of trust. You don’t need to understand everything to be moved. You may grope in the dark, feel without explaining. That may be the greatest power of this exhibition: it does not ask for knowledge, but for openness.
Materia Nova is, above all, an invitation. Not a loud proclamation, but a gentle gesture. A touch. Where understanding ends, art begins. And for those who dare to surrender to the material, there is still so much to feel, to smell and to learn.
Materia Nova, TaLe Art Gallery
