LustreComment encore marcher ? / Deuce

We’re already getting ready for the new season! For the first event of the year, we are delighted to welcome the Lustre team, who will be presenting their two new books: Comment encore marcher? and Deuce, on Thursday 21 September 2023 from 6pm to 9pm.

Comment encore marcher ?
Lithographs : Lisa Sibillat, texts : Oliver Spinewine

Lisa Sibillat lives and works in Brussels, where she teaches drawing and works with sketchbooks, lithography and painting.
In her images, which have become “Comment encore marcher?”, she explores mineral matter as a lithographer.
Stone, a living material that is unpredictable under the effect of the elements, forces the artist to lose control and suggests that her working rhythm is subject to that of the material, to the mystery of the result that the material imposes or proposes.
This work in black and white is a series of lithographs: silhouettes standing or trying to stand on their legs, to be in movement. As long as you have movement, you’re alive. The images were done, the postures visible. Olivier Spinewine’s text unfolds the question “How can we still walk? The question is rephrased according to possible adversities (physical incapacity, getting up after falling and then falling down again, etc.) which are treated as scenarios familiar to everyone. These scenarios are not “described” in the way a realistic narrative would be, but serve as the basis for a language that plays with them and weaves in new potentials. As these scenarios are in flux (not embodied definitively by a fixed character), the text suggests a network of readings of Lisa Sibillat’s images.

DEUCE
Texts : Christophe Van Staen, drawings : Olivier Spinewine

Christophe Van Staen (text) and Olivier Spinewine (images) began the book with a jubilant creative ping-pong match, with no constraints other than the semantic link (however offbeat, however tenuous). After rearranging this initial material, the result is a 32-page book that is properly satirical (in the Roman sense of a mixture, a potpourri). The first image, of a dead language, sets the tone for the rest of the book, which deliberately veers between erudition, potty humour and zutic poetry. The title, “Deuce”, refers to tennis (the return to equality of “40A” in the service game) but also marks an attempt at equality in the evocations of text and image. While there are a few notes of seriousness, the project as a whole is intended to be light, with texts combining cinema, literature (Petronius, Ovid), political philosophy, etymology, philology and history, all set against a hallucinatory backdrop, that of Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries, with its fresco, here echoed in the drawings. Pascal Quignard suggests that we see this fresco as “the chamber of fear in the face of fantasy. Mystery arises when, in addition to fright, fascination is added”.

About LUSTRE:
LUSTRE is a publishing house founded in Brussels in 2007 by Alexia de Visscher and Olivier Spinewine. The guiding principle is an interest in contemporary drawing and its publication.

Lustre used the “Pliés” form: artists’ books made up of a 50×70 cm offset sheet, printed on both sides, in a print run of 200 copies. The number of folds applied to this sheet defines the format of the Pliés, which can then be read like a book (page after page), or like a poster when unfolded. The collection includes 20 “Pliés” and has featured the work of contemporary artists: Olivier Deprez, Philippe Weisbecker, Alexander Roob, Christophe Terlinden, Eric Dederen , Myriam Hornard, Benoit Platéus, Ets Decoux, Felicia Atkinson, EDM, Baudouin Oosterlynck, Dominique Rappez, Denicolai & Provoost, Juan d’Oultremont, Benjamin Monti, Raphaël Van Lerberghe.

In addition to the “Pliés”, Lustre also uses the form of the book itself: “Laar” by Jacques Faton, “Catalogue”, “Blind date book” by Transquinquennal, “Carnet” by Dominique Rappez.

Lustre has regularly received publishing support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. Since 2017, we have continued to explore publishing under other names: Alexia de Visscher with “projet A. de Visscher – éditeur” and “A.R.D.V.L”, and Olivier Spinewine with the photographic and editorial project “Villevue”. Alexia remains Lustre’s resident designer, as she was for our recent ‘Le Pédiluve, Graded Exposure to Feet’. Olivier is now in charge of artistic direction, continuing the publishing project as an artistic venture open to new collaborations, such as this book, a proposal based on the relationship between text and image:

« Comment encore marcher ? » (lithographs : Lisa Sibillat, texts : Olivier Spinewine) et « Deuce » (texts : Christophe Van Staen, drawings : Olivier Spinewine).
These two books launch a new, more flexible collection for Lustre. Arnaud Lorne, a freelance graphic designer who has worked on the design of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, has maintained the same high standards as a designer, while optimising the object and its costs: two-colour offset rather than four-colour offset, the format, the “Singer” binding (sewn only), all combine to open up a formal universe, maintain coherence with the existing catalogue, and provide a workable solution for the publishing context.