Belles récompenses

In May 2023, nearly all my paintings were stolen on a sidewalk of Outremeuse in Liège.

Ten years of vanity, tenderness and chaos, once offered to the beautiful eyes of all, have since only made the eyes of a scrupulous thief or an ill-advised admirer cry (in addition to my own eyes).

In September of the same year, I organized the first edition of Belles récompenses in the vaults of the National Bank’s printing house and presented a triptych of large-format reproductions of three small paintings lost in the theft. All three were selected simply because they were my favorites.

I recreated the crime scene, invoked my abductor through the below proverb and invited him to return my paintings, offering an exchange for these three reproductions, stunning rewards, larger, more detailed, more important, more precious, except to me.

“ill got, ill spent”

What about what’s truly lost?

The sentimental value of a lost treasure, just like a gold bar for a missing dog on a crumpled poster, sometimes makes the bait bigger than the catch.

Belles récompenses questions blackmailing and the value of things. What do we gain when we lose something? What do we receive when we return something? What if the outline of emptiness was the frame of something magnificent?