Income
2023
group exhibition
Gauli Zitter, Brussels

Designer handbag bought at price of artist fee for a previous exhibition—kept by artist, sold as artwork or resold on online platform, barcoded sales label, hardboiled egg.

In ‘Work’ at Gauli Zitter (...) Céline Mathieu’s pieces deal with the circulation of personal labored objects, looking into their economics when they shift across different contexts (...).

Workwear
2023

Artist’s personal shirt, others’ clay and nettle dye, silk, daily wear.

Hifi Stereo Vacuum Tube
2023
Solo exhibition

In my first exhibition in a commercial gallery, I look into the (in)visible circulation of goods. The exploration of a constant stream of material as the crossing of economy, value and feelings, forms the basis for ‘Hifi Stereo Vacuum Tube’.

Presented at PLUS-ONE Gallery, Antwerp

At PLUS-ONE Gallery, I give insight into the diet of the gallery workers, share author rights on a photograph of influencer Rachelle Robinett’s fridge, and plays on the home interior of potential buyers.

A window display carpet with book from a store a few streets away from the gallery is borrowed, yet still for sale.

An egg yolk stained cloth, lit by a rewired, plugged spotlight, continuously dances lightly in the air stream of a metal fan.

Leaning into the wall is a Le Parfumeur 609, a gift from Manor Grunewald, the artist presenting in the adjacent space. He has the same scent, of which he bought two for the price of one.

Interested in organic semi-solids, salt-cured egg yolks dot the space. The yolks were carefully preserved by my love T. B. and travelled from Berlin via Amsterdam, with the help of friends.

The heels in fabric have difficulty standing, they are part of a series of shoes made of soft materials; pure projections.

Upon showing my interest in photo-graphs of a pair of ruby earrings online, the somewhat confused 2dehands.be seller told me that I could use the images, as long as I acquired the earrings.

The exhibition is shaped for a large part during the installation process, leaving used water glasses around but also making me loose the shoes I was wearing every day to the installation, and resulting in left overs of an impromptu haircut-on-site idea.

The META drawers are both sound absorbing and sound emitting. In it is a picture of influencer Rachelle Robinett’s fridge’s inside. In full disclosure about my finances within the exhibition, R.R. proposed to take 10% of author rights on the image in case of sale. The image is titled after her.

Also in the drawers, is sound absorbing material, and a series of Sotheby’s pdf’s. The latter are inspired by Sotheby’s, using its description and graphic design format. The printouts give buyers the option of aquiring a light weight variant, rather than a physical piece.

All prices are odd looking numbers, as they relate directly to the price of an average Brussels flat rent.

By the entrance of the gallery, there’s a white display with books. I invited Books@ to select and sell books in relation to her practice, giving them a segment of the gallery shop. All proceeds of the book sale are attributed to Books@ and a new exchange between themv might occur if the drawer elements in the exhibition are left unsold.

At the counter you can ask to see a series of almost identical drawings inspired by an architecture sketch by Rem Koolhaas. I kept only the lines that overlapped with this space.

In a slightly hypnotic tone, the sound piece that clouds the space, narrates the exhibition, and sequences a series of music and voice recordings made by and in collaboration with Levi Lanser.

As for titles; the carpet and book are titled ‘Rare Air’, the photograph of the earrings ‘Teeth’, the fridge’s inside is titled after its owner as agreed with her ‘Rachelle Robinett’, the perfume gift is titled ‘Pepper’. The egg yolk stained cloth ‘Apricots’, the drawers with all they encompass ‘Practical Self Reliance’, the drawings inspired by Rem Koolhaas at the counter ‘Folder’, the fabric shoes ‘Express Thanks First’, the cluster of the stool ‘Stool’ and the fridge showing the gallery workers’ diet is called ‘Sugar’.

Mange d'haleine
2022
Sound, object, performativity
solo exhibition

Discarded Togo sofa (Michel Ducaroy for Ligne Roset; 1973, found in the streets by Jan Fack)

Borrowed PVC curtain (our shower curtain, a second one was purchased and will be returned after the exhibition)

Probiotic infused garments (designed and produced by textile chemist Rosie Broadhead)

Sound installation(voice: Céline Mathieu; music: Levi Lanser):

Josefin Granqvist (mere presence at the opening)

Note: Exhibition text was written down by hand by the owner of the exhibition space, and was playing as sound 'leaking' from a TV in the bathroom.

Presented at Gr_und, Berlin

The sun drenched space opened up, drawing a relation between the coat covered chair, and the rather empty space.

And off, streched, voice embodied language more than actual words. The undertone slightly eerie, pulling.

I'm recently thinking about what it means to make exhibitions using materials, yet without being left with storage after the exhibition.

I believe the show became a play on circulation and circularity, invisible chemical qualities of sound, scent and touch, coming together with borrowed goods, leaking sounds, blurred boundaries and thoughts on what it means to be (performatively) present.

BY-PRODUCT
2021
Solo exhibition

A cashmere sweater found in the street. Hand-washed but indelibly scented by a stranger’s perfume. A government confiscates tonnes of rice, sometime in the 2000s, believing it to be made of plastic.
As the rumour spread, from China to Africa, people start posting proof of this online. Scientists counter-argue that rice and plastic simply share material qualities. The rice turned out to be genuine, yet it contained traces of different bacteria.

A Lidl TOPMOVE® Aluminium Trolley in silver (discounted). Capacity: 68 litres, which sounds like the mass of an object expressed in liquid quantities. Lamps borrowed from an absent lover, an exhibition space and the Bauhaus store.
Literature found dried after being soaked; opened and stepped on, on a random page.

Rice broken, bought for €11 for 10kg, the grains were broken in production and sold at 2/3rd the price of rice.
Text copied by hand by an artist friend.

Sound in the space:

Presented at Lebensmittel, Berlin