Slick Slopes

Stephan Balleux | Sam Leach Slick Slopes Void_Melbourne 22 June - 15 July 2023 This exhibition is a synthesis of two distinct artistic voices, engaged in a dialogue that explores the intersections between climate change, artificial intelligence, nature, and the human condition. Named for its inherent duality, "Slick Slopes" encapsulates the simultaneous sense of downfall and resilience embedded in our current epoch, characterised by a precarious environment and technology's incessant advancement. Sam Leach, known for his meticulous representations of the interplay between nature and technology, pairs perfectly with Stephan Balleux, Head of the Painting Department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. Balleux's work, often veiled in layers of interpretation and meaning, challenges our understanding of painting as a medium. "Slick Slopes" is a critical exploration of urgent themes, marrying the profound and the playful, the serious and the satirical. A decade-long conversation between Balleux and Leach underpins this exhibition. It was initiated when Balleux undertook a residency in Australia in 2009. Over the years, their creative rapport has fostered a shared vocabulary, an artistic dialect that threads its way through their practices. Art, like language, is inherently relational; each work, object, or gesture exists within a complex network of associations, meanings, and histories. "Slick Slopes" bears testament to this, underscoring the fluid interplay between individual and collective, material and concept, tradition and innovation. In addition to painting, the exhibition spans a range of media, incorporating sculptural works and found objects. The result is a tableau that captures the dynamic process of mutual influence and common exploration. Each object, whether meticulously crafted or spontaneously discovered, finds its place within this constellation, contributing its unique voice to the collective narrative. "Slick Slopes" takes a responsive and somewhat spontaneous approach to curating. Balleux and Leach eschew rigid preconceptions and fixed plans in favour of a more organic method. They respond to the gallery space, the material at hand, and the evolving dynamic of their creative dialogue, letting these elements shape the final form of the exhibition. The gallery becomes an active participant in their artistic conversation. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Stephan BALLEUX (°1974) - Stephan Balleux's multidisciplinary artistic work, in the diversity of its expressions (painting, drawing, animated video, sculpture...), is akin to an interrogative quest on the essence and meaning of pictorial practice. His work explores the techniques of illusion that the image allows to question the modes of perception in humans, creating visual compositions that defy the expectations of the observer. The recurring element of his work is the fluidity of natural and artificial materials, but he also uses historical (general and art history) and cultural references (mainly zoology, cinematography, architecture, anthropology and literature) to give his work an added depth, a constant questioning of the human condition. After obtaining a Master's Degree in Painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, Higher School of Arts (ARBA-ESA), he is laureate of the Tapestry Foundation in Tournai before integrating the postgraduate program of the Hoger Instituut Voor Schone Kunsten (HISK). He has been a full professor of painting at ARBA-ESA since 2013 and works as a visual artist and artistic coordinator on Art/Science/Sustainable Energy international art based research project "The Turbine Plays”, initiated and leads by Frouke Wiarda. Artist Laureate of the Jos Albert (1999), Médiatine (2002), Godecharles (2003), the Smart national scholarship (2010), the Jean&Irène Ransy Prize (2014) and more recently, the Gustave Camus Prize (2016) awarded by the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium; he is also, in the same year, laureate of the public contract for the creation and integration of a work of art within the Boverie Museum (Liège). His work has been exhibited many times in Belgium and abroad, in art centers, institutions, art galleries and art fairs such as Art Brussels, BE / Art Rotterdam, NL / L.A. Art show, USA / Patrick Painter Inc., Los Angeles, USA / Bozar, Brussels, BE / Ixelles Museum, BE / Larmgalleri, Copenhagen, DA / Sherin Najjar gallery, Berlin, DE / LA CENTRALE For Contemporary Art, Brussels, BE / Maison Particulière, Ixelles, BE / Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, USA / Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, Paris, FR / Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing, FR / Robert Miller Gallery, NYC, USA / WIELS Centre d'Art Contemporain, Bruxelles, BE / Brakkegrond, Amsterdam, NL/ Le musée du Botanique, Brussels, BE/Musée L, LLN, BE In 2005, Harald Szeemann presented one of his works for the exhibition La Belgique visionnaire presented in Bozar, Brussels; in 2014, the monographic exhibition "La peinture et son double" at the Musée d'Ixelles presented an important selection of key works in the course of the painter's career. Sam LEACH (1973) Sam Leach’s works are informed by art history, science, and philosophy. He combines the poles of the metaphorical and the empirical, the analogous and the objective, in an ongoing investigation of the relationship between humans and animals. With a distanced, scientific approach, the artist draws connections between data visualisation techniques, semiotics, and formalist abstraction that results in a kind of reductive aesthetics. Leach’s recent work has involved the use of machine learning in the analysis of visual data with a focus on the impact of AI on non-human animals. In 2015, Sam Leach was featured in Time Space Existence, a collateral event of the Venice Biennale, and a major monograph with essays by Andrew Frost and esteemed fiction writer Tim Winton. In the same year, he completed an Art OMI Australia Committee Fellowship Residency in New York. In 2010, Leach won both Wynne and Archibald Prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and he was a finalist for the Royal Bank of Scotland Emerging Artist Award in 2009. His work has been extensively exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Mercury, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney (2018); 6600+, curated by Vanessa Gerrans, Warrnambool Art Gallery, VIC (2018); Avian Interplanetary, Linden New Art, Melbourne (2017); Gravity Tractor, Sullivan+Strumpf, Singapore (2016); Crossing Borders, Palazzo Bembo, 56th Venice Biennale, Italy (2015); The Ecstasy of Infrastructure, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria (2012) and Cosmists, 24HR ART, Northern Territory of Contemporary Art, Darwin (2010). Recent group exhibitions include Dark (Other) Times, Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania, Australia (2018); My Monster: The Human-Animal Hybrid, RMIT Gallery, City Campus, Melbourne (2018); Birds and Bees, Museum of Discovery, Adelaide (2018); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013); SkyLab, LaTrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria (2013); Haunts and Follies, Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2012) and First Life Residency in Landscape, Xin Dong Cheng Space for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2011). Sam LEACH is represented by Sullivan+Strumpf.