Exhibition view, Absolute Art Gallery, Bruges
Stéphane Halleux, born in Belgium in 1972, is the sculptor of his own dreams.
He studied at the College of Arts “Saint-Luke Academy” in Liège. After his studies, he began his career as a colour advisor and scale model designer in the animation industry. He was extremely fascinated by sculpture and got the idea to assemble varied items in order to create a somewhat crazy universe. Stéphane Halleux uses humour in his work. As an artist, he claims the right to laugh, and therefore he sculpts and denounces the absurdity of life in a cynical way. Through the precision of their construction, his works deliver the illusionary lightness of the artist’s childlike universe, while incorporating that subtle hint of irony where the viewer can project their own imagination upon it and become entangled in the sculptural proposition.
His works combine bronze, copper, wood and leather, a diverse collection of parts, all of which will be incorporated into the installation technique.
Methodically, he collects photographs and rigorously arranges the fragments that make up his works. As a sincere visual artist, he is moved by being in touch with the materials he chooses to work with, deploying uncommon creativity and multiple skills that revive the heritage of the artisan artist.
As a timeless artist, Stéphane Halleux does not submit to any particular school. His work questions society according to its own rules, where superheroes from American comic books cohabit with the world of cinema and animation. Whether one finds influences of Jules Verne, Tim Burton or Marcel Duchamp, the artist thinks outside of the realm of imagination. His deceptively naïve dreamlike style creates, with humour, a coherent and powerful body of work where technical rigour and precision are concealed beneath the features of an explorer ready to conquer a retro-futuristic world.
In this anachronistic work, Stéphane Halleux’s idea is simple: the future is the fantasy of our past, projected into a new technological space. His visual research articulates these two temporalities. The future turns immediately old-fashioned, outdated, reflexive and narrative. Halleux works with inanimate objects, giving them a life of their own through the sculpture.
