Robin Wen, emotion at the end of the blue bic pen

The exhibition unveils a set of spectacular drawings, including several from his series Blue Rave. Noble and moving, his compositions deliver fragments of free parties : the silhouettes of the participants, the walking of stray dogs, the tarpaulins and other makeshift shelters… Robin Wen becomes the champion of these disillusioned youth in search of freedom, giving us freeze frames of their hidden lives… Through his technique dazzling, almost insolent, he deconstructs prejudices by sublimating this transgressive and fantasized subculture.

Capturing the intimate

In this stolen kiss scene titled Blue RaveRobin Wen captures an intimate moment. Against a backdrop of wild nature, two young people sitting in the grass appear absorbed in each other. Tattoos, sacred symbols of individuality, mingle here with the universal expression of love. The blue monochromy envelops the scene in a very calm atmosphere, with an aura of tenderness, creating a contrast with the contemporary and underground appearance of the characters. The image oscillates between an extremely banal reality (a feeling reinforced by the can placed next to them) and an idealized romanticism, elevating a scene from everyday life to the rank of a work of Art. The perforation at the top of the image, reminiscent of the pages of a spiral notebook, adds an unexpected dimension: it evokes the fragility of this moment, like the page torn from a diary which could be lost or forgotten. . Claire Leblanc, curator and director of the Ixelles Museum, describes this work with absolute sensitivity: “There are embraces whose ardor and intensity are combined with gentleness and purity. […] The bodies melt, merge, and the faces are swallowed up with a tension and fluidity unique to the artist.” (Introduction text by Robin Wen, p.11)

Cosmic Fractals

With his series entitled LightsRobin Wen explores the world of nighttime parties by capturing the light patterns that come to life there. These four large formats, presented in quadriptych, are part of a set of around twenty works where light, appearing in repetitive and multiplied compositions, becomes abstraction. At first glance, these points of light, suspended on a deep blue background, seem familiar: they recall the sparkles that float in the darkness of festive nights. However, by pushing abstraction to its climax, the artist invites us to go beyond this reference to question our gaze. Between figurative and abstraction, these large formats take us into their depths, evoking in turn a cosmological vision, a distant constellation, a microscopic exploration, a window open to infinity… Robin Wen explains to us: “I wanted to play on the lights that we perceive in the darkness and multiply them in fractals, to gain in abstraction.” This approach creates a subtle tension between the suggestion of a tangible reality and a form of dissolution.

The formidable history of Pop Art told around the work of Tom Wesselmann

Art critic and curator of the contemporary department at the RMBAB, Pierre-Yves Desaive sheds light on this production: “Robin Wen leaves the domain of reality to produce invented forms, designed from existing patterns which he manipulates to the point of making them impossible to identify, leading to a quasi abstraction […] the shapes are not added to the blue background but subtracted from it. It is indeed the color of the paper which produces the white tones surrounded, sometimes slightly invaded, by an inky blue sky created with a ballpoint pen.” (Introduction text by Robin Wen, p.19)

Sacrificed sound system

For the very first time, we discover Robin Wen’s approach in its spatial dimension. Eleven Steens in fact hosts two installations, each just as strange as the other for anyone unfamiliar with the world and culture of free parties.

Social roles in Cindy Sherman’s crosshairs

The sound installation entitled Campfire brings together burnt wooden boxes, creating a scene that is at once brutal, nostalgic and sacred. This proposal, which evokes sacrifice, is directly inspired by a striking scene: rave party organizers set fire to their boxes to avoid having them seized. This work resurrects this moment by evoking a strange and symbolic campfire. Here, the object that brings people together through music is destroyed. However, it retains all its evocative power. These boxes, designed to broadcast specific musical frequencies, are almost silent. Almost… Listen up. One of them whispers. A muffled sound escapes. We hear it like the distant echo of a bygone time. Unable to pass through the burnt walls of the box, the music inside is muffled. Like an abandoned cemetery, these boxes – sometimes inclined, sometimes anchored in the ground – evoke the remains of past evenings. Although they appear to us in their raw form, Robin Wen nevertheless takes care of appearances. The black, burnt wood exposes its cracks, giving these relics generating a dystopian universe a refined, very sophisticated character. And it is no coincidence that this wood, the result of a traditional Japanese technique (called Shou Sugi Ban or Yakisugi), is very regularly used in architecture and contemporary design for its raw and dark but very aesthetic appearance, as well as for its durability. A material that induces tension, between beauty and destruction.

A totem between surrealism and initiation rite

This installation, entitled Head with Dreadsimpresses with its strange and almost mystical structure: an immense column of dreadlocks, long hair rolled up and braided to form thick and compact strands. The hair, similar to wool, was braided then felted with a comb and a small hook, a technique used by “dreaders” to obtain this unique organic appearance. The artist tells us that creating a dread is a laborious exercise that he partly entrusted to Sara Stordeur, a specialist in creating this hairstyle often associated with people identifying with subcultures and/or opting for alternative lifestyles. With unfailing patience, the young woman braided each strand with meticulousness and artisanal precision.

Made up of nearly two hundred dreads two meters high, networked with the participation of Pauline Dornat, textile artist, this hair sculpture floating a few centimeters from the ground escapes any category. Close to the ritual object, it evokes tribal art, sacred objects from Africa but also from South America… Certainly, the ethnic character is shaken up by the surrealist dimension of the whole which intrigues and challenges. Head with Dreads stands like a modern totem, merging cultural influences and symbols of alternative communities, while evoking an artifact from another time or reality. A work that invites the viewer to question the link between identity, ritual and transformation. Certainly, Robin Wen is surprising!

• Robin Wen. Solo Show Drawings Where Eleven Steens, Rue Steens 11, 1060 – Saint-Gilles, www.elevensteens.com When Until December 15, Saturday and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.