ERIC CROES

Eric Croes never returns from his travels empty-handed. The artist has developed a habit of collecting and keepingeverything he has spotted, seen and loved while on the road. Not in the digital depths of his cell phone, but in passport-sized notebooks that never leave his pockets. He covers the pages with all sorts of notes, sketches, reproductions. Hisnotebooks serve as his memory, traces and evidence of all his discoveries and experiences. Once back in his Brusselsstudio, he recomposes it all with his hands: he returns to clay everything he has collected along the way.

In that sense, Croes’ work is always composite, hybrid. When he crafts his powerful shapes, deep vases, golems or totemsstemming from his roving imagination, he invites us to follow in his footsteps, to wander with him. His creations bear andexpress his intimate legends, skin-deep. Intertwined, tangled memories, experiences and fantasies. You may on occasionidentify the origin of these visions: there are escapades, true or dreamed up, to Italy or Japan. There are the manymuseums Croes has explored since his teens, from the Louvre to the Met, not to mention his favourite displays inBrussels. There is fauna and flora, actual or mythical animals and plants–from the poppy to the monkey, from thecentaur to citrus fruits – which constantly return to bloom and grow in his work. You will also find dates, numbers,enigmatic secret words.

Every image conveys a memory–and hence a feeling, and thus reflects an emotion. Good or bad, bright or murky, theytell the story of Croes. From his passions to his obsessions, from his childhood to his daily life. Everything that inspiresand fuels, everything that obsesses and illuminates. The smallest monuments can give rise to great memories. Somesymbols end up changed, transformed. The figures Eric Croes designs are covered in tattoos, fully dressed for the winter.It’s a nod to the show’s title–‘Like an old tattoo’, lyrics borrowed from a gentle, melancholy track by Belgian singerArno – that shines a light on these marks of a buried past still present on the surface of our lives.

Here, for the first time, the artist has chosen to showcase the sources of his creation: his notebooks are presented in anancient wooden display case reminiscent of classic Brussels museums. The matrix of his substance, in a sense, throughwhich he unveils multiple origins and infinite foundations. Without betraying the mysterious nature of his assembledpieces, this insight into his artistic practice allows us to identify with and find ourselves even more in his work.

EricCroes’ sculptures are intimately linked to his life and discoveries, but they also reflect a more universal resolve–aquest for ever-multiple beauties, a passionate pursuit of love and humour, a mix of materials and colours reminiscent oflife’s polyphony, of our fantasies, of our impulses. With his strong technical acumen and ever-expanding inventiveness,Eric Croes revives and blends everything that passes through him and everywhere he passes through. To better share itall with us , and to better dazzle us

Press release courtesy Almine Rech. Text: Boris Bergman.