"Georges Meurant - Transfigurations"
Installation view at Aeroplastics (Maison Henoul), 2019
Georges Meurant : Transfigurations
14 September - 5 October 2019
Aeroplastics @ Maison Hénoul, Brussels
Aeroplastics / Jerome Jacobs inaugurates a new temporary space at the heart of a vast modernist residence designed by architect Édouard Taelemans in 1928, the recently restored Hénoul House, at 76 avenue Franklin Roosevelt in Ixelles, close to the ULB and the Fondation Boghossian. On this occasion, Aeroplastics will present its fifth exhibition of the painter Georges Meurant.
Georges Meurant has developed a unique painting style, at the crossroads of geometric abstraction and spirituality, as theorized by the aesthetician Jean Guiraud (1929-2009) under the appellation "figural induction". The painter poses the color upon square panels of poplar wood, with the format varying between 40 to 240 cm. per side. Next the material is sanded, the aim being to reinforce the tints' density. So structured, the compositions are not the object of any preconceived study, answering solely to their own internal logic. And this logic is first and foremost dynamic: the works of Georges Meurant trap our gaze, then inviting it to travel without end in the colored space of the painting.
Induced and not constructed, the painting of Georges Meurant evades all attempts at classification. In this way the artist considers to have been more influenced by the traditional arts of sub-Saharan Africa (most particularly by the embroidery of the Shoowa from Kasaï, which he collects), than by Western modernism.
Represented in many public and private collections, the artist has also made - in collaboration with the architect Philippe Samyn - large-scale works integrated into several buildings, both in Belgium and abroad: the headquarters of AGC Glass Europe (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2014), the tower at Zhoushan in China (2010-2016), the lobby of the K-Tower (Kortrijk, 2018), as well as the principal seat of the European Council and the Council of the European Union (Brussels, 2010-2017).
Pierre-Yves Desaive
Brussels, August 2019
