Summary<\/p>\n
French artist Marguerite Piard is set to open Les Veilleuses at Stems Gallery in Brussels on August 14
\nThrough her work, Piard urges audiences to challenge perceptions of female nudity<\/p>\n
Stems Gallery<\/a> is set to open a new solo exhibition by Marguerite Piard<\/a> at its Brussels flagship. In Les Veilleuses, which translates to The Night Lights, paintings of friends, family and lovers find home in intimate settings, awash with warm, humane hues \u2014 \u201cLes Veilleuses is about our loved ones,\u201d as the gallery described.<\/p>\n Piard\u2019s tender, often tightly-framed, captures transport us to an emotional limbo akin to the silence shared between two friends. Echoing this sentiment is her unique choice of canvas, opting for sculpted wooden panels or smooth slabs of stone. Here, the artist presents bodies in an ethereal, introspective light where her subjects, still grounded in unique characters, let themselves go.\n<\/p>\n Through these autofictional encounters, Piard challenges common notions of female nudity and the gaze of desire with an empathetic hand: \u201cAddressing desire without sexualization. Glorifying without pomp and circumstance through the prism of tenderness,\u201d Elo\u00efse Duguay wrote in a press statement. Unapologetic and raw, the artist aims to liberate her subjects through the act of art making, rather than merely depicting them. \u201cFrom then on, her quest for comfort, for solitary and shared confrontations, became a mutual emancipation.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u201cFor Marguerite Piard, painting and the body are one and the same. Both transform, tell, convey, experience, to such an extent that they merge,\u201d Duguay contines. \u201cThey are bridges that we cross and on which our experiences are traced, which the artist encourages us not to conceal.\u201d\n<\/p>\n For those who find themselves in the Belgian capital, Les Veilleuses<\/a> opens on August 14 and will remain on view through September 14.\n<\/p>\n Stems Gallery Brussels
Rue du Prince Albert 4,
1050 Ixelles,
Belgium<\/p>\n