Martin Belou

At the crossroads between installations and sculpture, Martin Belou invents spaces both welcoming and intriguing, where natural and everyday objects rub shoulders. His pieces create situations and invite the spectator’s body to enter a dialogue with their memory, reactivating shared ancestral practices. It is a matter of shared sensibility, where the human and non-human can coexist in an astonishing symbiosis.

The “world-objects” Belou creates seem to come straight from mysterious archeological remains, blurring the distinction between ancient and contemporary. Sometimes a forager, sometimes a blacksmith, Martin Belou creates poetic spaces in which the organic materials he gathers and combines – charcoal, stones, spices, gourds or mushrooms – can cohabitate and create new ecosystems. He reconciles opposites, presenting worlds in which man is both omnipresent and absent, as when an armchair of cutting-edge design appears in the midst of a forest of agave trees (Demain les chiens, Palais de Tokyo, 2019): an unusual portrayal of a future post-Anthropocene world. Martin Belou’s work speaks to people’s bodies in a synesthetic approach and composes an architecture of feeling.
- Excerpts from Galerie Catherine Issert’s exhibition text for Martin Belou’s solo show “L’eau seule”, May 2023

Martin Belou showed his work in Belgium and abroad, including solo exhibitions at Catherine Issert Gallery, Saint Paul de Vence (2023); Bernier/Eliades, Brussels (2020) sans titre, Paris (2020); La Tôlerie, Clermont-Ferrand; Bastide Projects, Marseille; CIAP Kunstverein, Hasselt and Kunsthal, Ghent. Group exhibitions include Confort Moderne, Poitiers; Bozar, Brussels; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. 


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