Anne-Sophie & Alice de Visscher at Le Maga

Like a whispered poem, the softest touch, or a wisp of air, the works of Anne-Sophie de Visscher and Alice De Visscher imbue Le Maga with the ephemeral and the intimate.

Drawings with a few energetic lines, a single cut in a sheet of paper, dark shapes hiding in plain sight, the ripples in silk paper, a fly curtain in a light breeze, a weathered mountain, the slightest move of a balloon, or tears in a paper structure… Le Maga, a space for poetic and experimental artistic projects, has been transformed into a minimalistic poem, almost translucent and punctuated by tiny ephemeral gestures – barely touching, yet touching home.

This bold but fragile universe is the enticing result of a collaboration between Anne-Sophie de Visscher and Alice De Visscher, second cousins, who, for the occasion, have extracted one common language from both of their personal practices. Alice De Visscher: "My performances have always played with the space, by lining it and punctuating it with cords, elastic bands, or balloons. I thus attempt to make the space move subtly. Anne-Sophie's urban interventions are also focused on that spatial element. By collaborating and exploring one another's studio work, we discovered a set of common codes."

Intuition
A simple but scintillating vocabulary of lines, colours, and forms. Accents that conceal nothing, but leave the space wide open for interpretation. Like bodies waiting for a meaningful touch. Anne-Sophie de Visscher: "By stripping away everything superfluous you allow intuition to take over and lower the threshold to move somebody. At the same time, this stripped language is also a way to cause vibrations. That was the aim from the very beginning: to be swept away by the simple pleasure of form and colour. To show things that do not require a concept or context; things that can find a voice by themselves."

Alice: "One line can fill a whole page. The minimalistic approach, beyond references and additional layers, speaks to people directly. You could call it a form of poetry. I was not trained in the fine arts and I can't create beautiful shading or gradients. But this lack of means is part of my identity, and I embrace it."

Questioning the landscape
It is as though things begin to speak for themselves, with the direct expressiveness and power of a first word. Alice: "In theatre, despite or precisely thanks to the use of words, there are a lot of malentendus. Simplicity impels people to invest themselves, makes clear how the relationship works: it is the people who project and imbue it with meaning." That said, these works resonate and create an opening with the viewer, but they are also unmistakably the echo of a particular, irreducible sound.

Anne-Sophie: "After my urban interventions – moments that aimed to offer passers-by a moment of poetry – I started studying sculpture, and I had to learn to create something from nothing. For in-situ works, I relied heavily on the space, almost letting it define me, but now I have to put myself on the line, carving out a personal space, and thus digging up things that flow from me myself. So these works are swathed in simplicity, but they also convey questions about the landscape, the body…sombre things sometimes. They are not in your face, and there is enough light to work as an antidote, but there is a certain weight and some texture. Something delicate yet delicately alive."

> Anne-Sophie de Visscher & Alice De Visscher. > 25/3, Le Maga, Sint-Gillis