Crushed, cracked or stretched, this is how artist Lydie Arickx treats the matter. In her exhibition Charbon at Loo & Lou gallery, the painter is consciously returning to this material, which raises ecological, social and aesthetic questions, evoking both the environmental problems caused by its use and her family's roots in the northern region. Combined with resin or pigments, the artist presents works punctuated with acid colours, and asserts the deep contrasts that this material imposes on her canvases. The plastic qualities of coal are explored: in the form of dust, it fills his works with a dark, thick and shiny veil, while in contact with water, it creates a random network of veins. In keeping with his other exhibitions, Arickx creates correspondences between all these elements that form a body, such as a spinal column visible in a small work on paper, or the thick bark of a tree integrated into the composition of Tête Jaune, a large-format canvas. By employing an abrupt line and a mixture of states of matter, Lydie Arickx realises "the dream of an informal expressionism: that of matter without form, without framework and without corset", as Philippe Godin puts it.

Orlane Bachelet

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