“In October 2016 François de Coninck came from Antwerp and brought me a beautiful leather bound volume, belonging to the Marboeuf collection. Jean-Yves Jouannais wrote the introduction. The book contained an off print signed by Alain Rivière representing a wonderful Baudelaire with closed eyes. Then he handed me a small cardboard box that contained eight “erasures”.
The Antwerp artist called “erasures” strange corrosions. There were eight small pieces of paper that were so fragile, gnawed, extremely thin, of mediocre quality, stale, dying, sometimes punctured. Poor autumn leaves, each light as a feather, which was handled with hesitation for fear of breaking them or crumpling them. Small, film-like pages, soft like old banknotes. Velvety like the powdery wings of butterflies.These were sexual scenes torn from the very bad paper of pornographic magazines that had been visibly plunged into a violent acid. I examined them carefully. The spirit immediately began to chase the scene that had been removed in the dying shade. The scene dissolved in the solvent was almost invented. We were looking for the mysterious embrace. Sometimes the bodies interlocked. Sometimes they were pieces of arms, open mouths, bushes, fleeces, flared or violently arched sexes.I applied myself. I admired. At last I contemplated in silence.It seemed to me that through corrosion Francis de Coninck’s art had found a brand new, modest, overwhelming, minimal, effective formulation, to the fantasy that had carried me for more than twenty years. ”
Pascal Quignard, from the postface
Angoisse et beauté,Seuil, 2018, 120 p., 49 €.
François de Coninck – Vestiges de l’Amour
Original images illustrating Angoisse et beauté
November 11 – December 31, 2018-11-12
Espace Rivoli 28
690 chaussée de Waterloo (Bascule)
1180 Brussels, Belgium
