Lucie Lanzini and Emma Mortier present for this exhibition at Plagiarama a set of works reflecting a puzzling balance between abstraction and figuration. Working from figurative elements, they develop a subtle abstract figuration.

Lucie Lanzini creates sculptures composed by molded elements, glasses and mirrors. She molds fragments of figurative architectural elements. The principle of this technique is inversion. The new object she creates is intelligible, and is the negative of the original one. The figuration we get is given by its absence; the obtained print is an abstraction of the original figuration.

Figuration expresses also itself in a very delicate way, by the mirrors, which are part of the installations; the abstract reflexive surfaces also figure ourselves and the space around us.

Emma Mortier creates large format paintings, working from photographic prints. Her paintings appear at once abstract and figurative. At first sight we can imagine elusive landscapes, while textures, colors and compositions bring us back to the painting itself, reminding us the indefinable quality present in Raoul De Keyser’s work.

Both artists in their own ways work on a complex and subtle balance between figurative and abstract elements. They go far beyond those limits, like Nicolas de Staël said he does not believe in the opposing of abstract and figurative painting, and that a painting should be at once abstract and figurative.

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