Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel artwork

"The recorder, the tap, the work boot, the mobile phone, the pencil, the pearl necklace, the derailleur, the pear, the computer mouse, the spool of wire, the loaf of cramic bread, the calculator and the tennis ball."
Marble, granite and travertine marquetry 2022
Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel
Daniel Dewar 1976, Forest of Dean, UK.
Grégory Gicquel 1975, Saint-Brieuc, France.
Live and work in Brussels.

The four large paintings are composed of a white marble background and inlaid patterns of natural marble, granite and travertine stones. These monumental paintings depict universal, everyday objects, emblematic of our time.

These "word-images", readable by all, make up sentences that everyone is free to interpret as they wish. In this administrative space, governed by the national and official languages, other languages and dialects are also present. The work enables us to engage in conversation using visual words, universally understood, regardless of the origin of the interlocutor.

The objects depicted form a sort of time capsule, revealing life in the city in the 21st century, and remind us that other objects attesting to the daily life of the city's inhabitants from the 10th to the 20th century - coins, ceramics, combs and brushes - have been discovered on the site of the Administrative Centre. This creates a link between the ancient city and the city as we now know it.

Through this oeuvre, the duo of artists also asks the question: "What objects could be found in an archaeological dig in five hundred or a thousand years from now that we would still recognize, regardless of how much time had passed?"

Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel have been working together as sculptors since 1998. Their iconoclastic work operates on a principle of perpetual engagement with materials and processes. Their ambiguous practice incorporates a wide spectrum of traditional media, from ceramic work, to woodcarving, to stone carving.

Their consideration of the origin and nature of materials in relation to a subject or model, as well as the manipulation of techniques and tools, both obsolete and ultra-modern, give the artists a totally unique sculptural potential. The subject is sometimes intimate, often domestic, always universal.