Alain Lambilliotte

Alain Lambilliotte

Born on 27 April 1948, Charleroi, Belgium.
Lives and works in Belgium.

From 1964 to 1968, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mons.
From 1968 to 1973, studies at La Cambre, Engraving Workshop, Illustration.
From 1986 to 1987, Professor of Drawing at the Academy of Uccle.
From 1975 to 2013, Professor of Drawing at the School of Arts of Braine-l'Alleud.

Distinctions
1992 Gustave Camus Prize, awarded by the Belgian Academy.
1974 Mention in the "Frans Masereel" Prize for Engraving.


Alain Lambilliotte has been painting for nearly 40 years. He is a “painter” if painting consists in covering a surface with one or several colors. But at closer look, Lambilliote’s practice plays rather fast and loose with the rules of this art. In fact, he has become master in the art of walking off the beaten paths of conventions and traditions. From his very beginning in painting, he has shown a sense of transgression and appropriation indicative of a singular and original vision that quickly got him noticed by galerist Lucien Durand and invited to “Paris Travaux 77”, a major exhibition held at the Arc. There, he presented “works” which structures only referred to painting, integrating elements of drawing, print and assemblage that gave materiality to the object. He elaborated a dialectic of the part and the whole. Meaning that the frame was also drawing and structure. His “paintings” could be seen as “windows” for their relationship to the pictorial, but also as a piece of architecture opening walls, or the sliding structures characteristics of Japanese interiors. The artist played with the dynamic contrasts between what veils and unveils, showing however nothing more than the “gesture” of painting: line, trace, transparency and opacity. Mid-way between the ornamental and the analytical, Alain Lambilliotte puts us in plastic situations that disturbingly merge artistic rigor and a feeling of uncertainty, with a great deal of irony in the form of a discreet mockery of serious things.

Effortlessly, his practice has anticipated many of the approaches that “made” the recent history of painting and caught the attention of our institutions… like the art of combining decoration and deconstruction, handiwork and constructive logic, planning and chance, the “raw” and the “finished”. His work benefited form the Supports/Surfaces experiments while also finding inspiration in researches like Pattern Painting and Hard Edge. But he also -almost literally- added other strings to his bow: the art of reusing waste, composing with scraps, tying things up and resorting to practices other artists had used for totemic and symbolic purposes. Refusing false pretense, yet without condescendence, Alain Lambilliotte has appropriated archaic, industrial and craftsman’s practices without mimicry or vanity. Rather as an object and field of experiment, as well as possible modes of production.

In France, he has been one of the firsts to work with neon light both for its chromatic sheen and its way of blurring neat shapes. Some of his works strongly relate to Keith Sonnier. In his most recent pieces, the fluorescent colors combined with white outline and disrupt the form/content relationship in very subtle ways. His exhibition at the 19 Crac Montbéliard in 2010 left a strong impression on its visitors. With very few means, he managed to reach monumentality. There, simplicity served complex visual effects, as well as a use of the space that was both glorified and framed within the frame.

The artist understood a long time ago that painting no longer needed frame, and that it could make its way through colors.

With Lambilliote, color intermittently reconnects with the tradition of painting, but only to emancipate, as it freed itself from its chains and servitude to the image. This makes him a fine handyman who has brought up baroque in craftsman’s gestures and the art of drawing in the grooves of timber. And also decorative potential in the twists of a rope.

This is why those who keep in mind that art is also a way of seeing and that ways of seeing take part in a history of vision, techniques and know-hows, will be profoundly rattled by his art. Which, beyond the false modesty of its creator, manages to masterfully combine invention and craftsmanship, and appropriate non-artistic elements to renew itself.

Philippe Cyroulnik

Director of the 19 Montbéliard, Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain
Solo Show :

2016  
Rollebeek Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

2015  
Centre culturel d’Anderlecht: Maison des Artistes, Brussels, Belgium

2013  
Galerie Esschius, Diest, Belgium

2011  
Galerie Boycott, Brussels, Belgium

2010  
MUCHaboutART, Brussels, Belgium

2009  
Galerie Boycott, Brussels, Belgium

2008      
Galerie Ivana Morozoff, Brussels, Belgium

2006 
Fondation pour l’art belge contemporain, cité Fontainas, Brussels, Belgium

2005  
Fondation Bolly Charlier Galerie Juvenal, Huy, Belgium

2004  
Galerie Age, La Hulpe, Belgium

2003  
Galerie Boycott, Brussels, Belgium

2001
Magdalena Baxeras Gallery, Barcelona, Spain
Van Lerberghe/Stas de Richelle Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

2000  
Galerie  Boycott, Brussels, Belgium

1999  
Galerie Alain Winance, Tournai; Réalisation d’un décor de théâtre pour la quinzaine théâtrale de l’ULB, Brussels, Belgium

1998  
Galerie Boycott, Brussels, Belgium

1997  
Galerie De Vinci, Brussels, Belgium
Participation of Prince Pierre de Monaco, Monaco

1996  
Galerie Boycott, Brussels, Belgium
Galerie M. Becker, Knokke le Zoute, Belgium
Participation au Prix Prince Pierre de Monaco

1995  
Centre Culturel de Waterloo, Waterloo, Belgium

1993  
Galerie S. Berryer, Brussels, Belgium

1992  
Galerie Fumagali, Bergamo, Italy
Galerie M. Becker, Knokke le Zoute, Belgium
Galerie Benetter, Stockholm, Sweden

1991   
Galerie  Boycott, Bruxelles; Galerie A. Winance, Tournai, Belgium

1990   
Galerie M. Becker, Knokke le Zoute; Galerie Fumagali, Bergamo, Italy

1989     
Galerie M. Becker, Knokke le Zoute, Belgium

1988  
Caves Ste Croix, Metz, France

1987    
Galerie Polar Art, Brussels, Belgium

1986    
Ligne Roset, Beverly Bvd, Los Angeles, California
BP Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
BP Gallery, Anvers, Belgium

1985    
Belgian Week, Rich’s department Store, Atlanta, United-States

1983    
Art Shop, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium

1982   
Representation of Belgium at the Biennale de Paris, Paris, France

1981     
Galerie A. Monett, Brussels, Belgium

1980    
Atelier d’Art Européen, Brussels, Belgium
Médiathèque, Charleroi, Belgium

1979     
Art Prospect Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

1975   
 Maison des Graphistes, Bruxelles, Belgium



Group Show

2014  
Galerie Corinne Le Monnier, Le Havre, France
Espace 119, Brussels, Belgium

2009
 Affodable Art Fair, Brussels, Belgium

2004  
 École des Arts, Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium

2002  
«Printed Etchings » Centre Culturel, Perwelz, Belgium

2000  
 Isola Comacina Château Malou, Brussels, Belgium


1996  
Prix Prince Pierre de Monaco , Monaco


1994  
Galerie Boycott, Brussels, Belgium

1993  
Galerie Boycott, Brussels, Belgium

1991  
Galerie Boycott, Brussels, Belgium

1989  
 L’œil au bout des doigts , 100 Dessins de la Communauté Française de Belgique

1988  
Linéart, Gand, Belgium

1987  
 La trace de Tintin dans l’Imaginaire des Artistes  Le Botanique, Brussels, Belgium

1986  
La trace de Tintin dans l’Imaginaire des Artistes , Maison de la Culture, Tournai, Belgium

1982  
Print paper in Hainaut, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

1981  
Print paper in Hainaut, Museum of Mons, Belgium

1979    
 Dans le cadre des 50 ans de La Cambre, Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium

1977    
Art Jeune en Wallonie, au Musée de Mons; Prix Jeune Peinture, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium

1976  
Avec le Groupe Ice Screen, Laboratoires Goossens; Château Malou, Brussels, Belgium

1975  
Château Malou, Brussels, Belgium

1974  
Château Malou, Brussels, Belgium

1973  
Galerie Jacques Damase, Paris, France

1972  
Antonion Segui et six Graveurs, Musée de Mons, Belgium

1970  
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, Belgium

1969    
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, Belgium