L’Escaut Architectures & Bn PROJECTS are very happy to invite you to TNXCA, the project specially conceived and realized by Enrico GAIDO for the space of L’Escaut Architectures
 

L’Escaut Architectures may not need to be presented to the Belgian public.
It as an architects’ collective, or rather, an architects’ cooperative, who, over the years, have realized number of projects such as e.g., in Brussels, the Théâtre National, the Ursulines square-cum-skate park, The renovation of the Brasserie Belle-Vue and, more recently, that of the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth.
Among other projects, let us mention the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi, the Artothèque in Mons, or the Conservatory in Nantes.
Since their founding in 1989, they have also decided to, metaphorically and literally, « open up » their premises and put them to the disposal of visual artists such as Francis Alÿs, Edith Dekyndt, Jean-Claude Saudoyez and of creators from the performative and the time-based scene. A programme of residencies, workshops, often coupled with exhibition periods has been thus initiated and developed.
A common feature to these invitations which, far from being systematic, are grounded rather on intuitions and encounters, would lie in a desire to promote a transversal, at times risky, but often seminal cross-pollination of their and their guests’ respective practices.
 

Nourished by a strong background in engineering and an extensive practice of performative installations designed for the stage, Enrico Gaido’s work is structured by concepts of tension - whether it be on the conceptual or plastic level - implemented in a particularly effective and rigorous way.
Gaido’s work often oscillates between antinomic concepts, playing e.g. with the idea of unstable balance, under contant tension, as if it were threatened by a predictable or inevitable, if not programmed, collapse or disruption. Likewise, it reveals a true, if rather contradictory, fascination for archaeological findings, whilst simultaneously playing with the idea of controlled destructions.
 

As, such, upon his first visit to and discovery of L’Escaut as an organisation nourishing their professional and extra-curricular practice and reflexions by transversal cross-pollinations, but also as an architectural space, rich of its past as a former industrial workshop, Gaido was immediately seduced by the idea of trying and articulating a project which would cross the building through and through, in multiple directions and in its varied dimensions. A project which would expose and reveal itself progressively to the visitor, just as it would progressively unveil the history of both the building and the organisation.
A further ingredient was brought about by his discovery of the origin of the toponymy of the place, with its direct reference to a fluvial element, that is the river Escaut.
 

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Vernissage on Saturday 22 April

5-9 p.m.

Exhibition open on Saturdays and Sundays, 2-6 pm
and by appointment during the week
from 23 April until 30 june 2017
 

60 rue l'Escaut
1080 Molenbeek-Saint-Jean
(5 min from Tour et Taxis / Art Brussels)