Beyond the borders

The exhibition 'Beyond the borders' gathers works from AnuschB and Eric Guena, which have in common that they cross the borders of the visible and the invisible. The sculptures of AnuschB contain slices of past life, anchored in a personal and strong history, but also slices of the future life. Eric Guena's representational paintings transport us in distant worlds and make us discovering timeless unknown characters who ask us broad questions of the 'here and now' life and his abstract paintings raise complex cosmogonical questions.

AnuschB, born in 1971, is a Belgian artist who lives between Brussels and Murano. She found in Venice the lagoon of her childhood in Africa: the circle of Life …
She explains:
‘My passion for beads led me, over 10 years ago, into working with glass and exploring its many different techniques: hot and cold. Glass is a versatile medium that holds infinite possibilities. It offers transparency and opacity, plasticity and hardness, softness and roughness… It allows beauty and emotions to pass through it … it calls for touching and feeling …
My work mainly focuses on the creation of unique objects, whether it’s a piece of jewellery, a sculpture, a painting or a functional piece.
I find myself drawn to repetition of simple elements in my work. The uniqueness in it, the energy and emotions I wish to transmit derive from my personal experiences’.
Works 'Slices of life'
AnuschB writes: ' Slices of life, Heritage, Transmission... Tribute to my father
These works arose from a series of coincidences, tests, mistakes and fates, which in fact don’t exist... They are closely linked to the death of my father in August 18th, 2015. The glass offered me these wooden slices, as Slices of life, these values transmitted by my father.
My father made his career in Africa: in the trade and the transformation of the wood. As a child, I accompanied him many times on Sunday in the park in Abidjan. He told me and showed me the Love of the work we make '.

Eric Guena, been born in 1953, is an architect (DESA) and has a PhD in Esthetics and Sciences of the art. He also did several training courses of restorer of Japanese and Chinese art. In the years eighty, on the occasion of his numerous journeys in Eastern countries, he learned about the technique of Sumi-é (India ink on paper) and the work of the gold leaf. Thus we find the alliance of eastern and western influences in his work and this participates in the singular atmosphere, which lives in each of his paintings. During the 2000s, Eric Guena started to be interested in Abstraction. He created his abstract work with the principles used for his figurative work favouring the thickness of the pictorial material, the opposition of colours, their transparency or their matt effect. The main subject theme of these abstract works is the ‘Environment’ natural or transformed by Humanity.
Thus, during these last years several, his international exhibitions had for theme the water, the grass, the leaf, the earth seen by the sky and the scares due to human activity on the earth.

Marie-Pascale Meunier writes:
Les oeuvres figuratives d’Eric Guéna suggèrent, dans l’instant saisi, un avant, un après, comme le mouvement incessant et continue de la vie, le temps qui passe. Sa peinture nous plonge dans un univers doré sans décors. Posés dans cet espace mouvant, des personnages asexués, Hommes-enfants aux allures de moines semblent flotter. Mis en scène avec sobriété, dans une ambiance éthérée ils évoluent avec un tel naturel et une telle spontanéité que l’on a l’impression de leur voler un brin de leur intimité. Hors du temps, prisonniers de leurs rêves, de leurs peurs, de leur histoire, emportés par leur destin, tout simplement concentrés dans l’ici et maintenant, conscients ou en équilibre, leur visage rond est toute innocence, pureté. Que de profondeur et de recueillement dans leur posture. Leurs échanges silencieux sont au-delà des mots. Qu’ils communiquent entre eux, avec leur environnement, qu’ils se parlent à eux-mêmes ou qu’ils s’adressent à une entité invisible supérieure, ils s’expriment par la justesse de leur attitude. Comme un miroir sans intention, dans un monde uni, indéfini, sans fin, poursuivant un chemin connu d’eux seuls, ces êtres singuliers, joueurs parfois, intriguent par leur simplicité leur spiritualité leur humanité et nous ramènent à l’essence de nous-mêmes, nous bousculant avec douceur…
Quel est donc le suspens, le mystère, la sensation d’une forte présence invisible inhérente aux toiles figuratives d’Eric Guéna ?
N’est-ce pas paradoxal que le figuratif nous ouvre les yeux sur l’illimité, repoussant les contours du tableau, et nous suggère l’autre côté de la vie, efface les alentours pour nous ouvrir sur l’universalité ?'