All images Courtesy by the artist
His paintings, drawings, sculptures, writings, and performances give rise to untold resonances and interferences, in a play of metaphors and oxymorons. Fabrice Samyn spurs us to reexamine our relationship to time, to the sacred and to language, as he draws us into an intimate sensorial and spiritual experience.

Time's Pedestal, 2021
Sculpture
Bronze and Stone
200 x 40 x 40 cm

The Ever Presence of Beyond, de la série Wall Painting, 2015

Adam par Lucas Cranach l'Ancien, Musée d'Art ancien, Bruxelles et Eve par Lucas Cranach l'Ancien, Musée d'Art ancien, Bruxelles, 2010
inkjet photographic print, engraved and painted wooden frame
150 x 150 cm
This series consists of photographs of details taken from old paintings representing Adam and Eve. Samyn aimed his lens on the respective navels of the original couple painted by Hans Baldung Grien. In its day, the presence of the navel was the subject of protracted debate (Adam and Eve officially have no navels because they were not born of a mother). Greatly enlarged, these details turn into black holes or galaxies, whereby a religious image is transformed into the mysterious depths of the cosmos. The “original” couple were supposedly created in the image of the Creator; so if God has a navel, who is His mother? The series of navels refers to the impossibility of the original concept, and replaces it with an image of a void. The circular shape of the navel also questions the existence of a temporality other than the timeline.

Fallen Tree of Knowledge / L'Arbre de la Connaissance Chu, 2020
232 x 287 x 480 cm

All Saints (January), 2012
365 Inkjet prints on paper
13 x 18 cm each
In 2011, the artist photographed hundreds of names carved by strangers in public places, on benches, trees, in the streets. Once he had covered them in gold leaf, the first names were photographed, and 365 of them were selected by the artist to produce a universal calendar. The places where these names were discovered and photographed are primarily places of rest or observation. Public places, at any rate: places where people want to record their presence, be part of it, express themselves, exist. Samyn likes the idea of elevating wanderers to the status of saints. The only rules applied to the way they are hung is according to the months (we see 12 groups of 28 to 31 photographs). This was an opportunity for the artist to question the deepest intimacy in public spaces, by opening up as many interpretations as possible, including a reflection on the privatisation of public open spaces, the introduction of the marvellous into everyday life, multiculturalism (alongside typically Western names, there is a flourish of names that typically sound Arabic, Turkish or Anglo- Saxon, etc.), the relationship with delinquency, expression and communication of feelings in the city.

Endogenous/Exogenous / Endogène/Exogène, 2018
Agave flower and survival blanket
336 x 364 cm
Endogenous/Exogenous is part of a series using the agave flower, a recurring symbol in the artist’s work. The agave is a monocarpic succulent plant, which means it only flowers once after several years and dies after it has flowered. The Agave Americana, endemic to Central America, was introduced into Europe around the middle of the 16th century and spread throughout the Mediterranean. Its tall flower spike (up to 8m) has an abundance of tubular flowers. It is these flowers that are used in the works of art, as much for their symbolic significance as for their beauty. “Agave” comes from the Greek ᾰ̓γᾰθός, which means “awe-inspiring”. The Maya used it, and still do, as much for its fibre as for producing pulque and mezcal, sources of holy intoxication. A symbol of migration, recent promotion and holy intoxication, this flower has a particular resonance today, given increasing religious tensions on the borders between Mexico and the United States or in the Mediterranean Basin.

Indivisible From the Invisible, from the series Only in Space You May Find Your True Face, 2023
Painting
Oil on Canvas
105 x 72.4 cm

Fallen Tree of Knowledge / L'Arbre de la Connaissance Chu, 2020
232 x 287 x 480 cm
The Fallen Tree of Knowledge is a sculpture on an apple tree whose surface has been completely eaten by xylophagous insects. The engravings of astonishing precision which transformed the aspect and texture of the tree branches were made by different species, among which some are called “the typographers”. Each of these trajectories have been patiently gilded with golden leaves recycled from computers. As in the majority of Fabrice Samyn’s body of work, this piece seeks to evoke and transcend opposites, like a formalised oxymoron. The worms traces allude, as a vanitas, to our impermanence – the underground future of our corpses. And the gold, a noble material historically used by a variety of civilizations in sacred arts, recalls the eternity and the world above, as the metal is belived by different traditions to come from the stars. Once transformed by the artist, the labyrinthine traces remind us also of the computer chips from which the recycled gold used has been extracted. By recalling the myth of Eden, the title of this work invites us to ask ourselves: where has knowledge, in the ideological frame of progress, brought us? Global warming, air pollution and intensive agricultural practices have been causing massive outbreaks of xylophagous insects. The consequences of the vertiginous spread of the species is devastating for European forests and ecosystems. The recycled gold used by the artist to highlight the paths sculpted by the insects alludes to the tragic history of gold mining, which is at the source of ecocides, the destruction of the biosphere, and of our common lungs: the forest.

The Moon Is My Host, from the series 'Only in Space You May Find Your True Face, 2022
Painting
Oil on Canvas
120.4 x 81 cm