Odyssée Tour: skateboard decks on the road

Skateboard decks leave the streets and enter the galleries and museums – after first passing through the hands of artists. For the sixth exhibition organised by Art by Friends, entitled “Odyssée Tour”, the principle remains the same: skateboard decks are given a new twist, but this time the works in question will go on the road. Their journey begins in Brussels on 3 May, with the Brussels stage being organised by Chez Beng, which is made up of Yoo Beng, Polux, Michal Borowski, Pam, Benjamin Launay, and Thomas Sneessens. The approach will be the same in each city en route: Camille Regnaudin of Art by Friends has contacts with local groups that will each take on a stage of the travelling exhibition. “It all started with a bit of madness among friends,” explains Polux, recalling how Art by Friends got started. “Annecy is a city saturated in skate culture and in art. And as it’s a small city, everyone knows everyone else and people soon linked up and did stuff together.” The project grew and the Annecy group has now given carte blanche to a group of young artists who met each other while studying at the Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles.

(© Michal Borowski)

“Without giving everything away, you could say that it will be more powerful than last year’s, as there will be twice as many artists from lots of different cultures,” says Thomas. “The range of disciplines is pretty vast: there are designers, sculptors, illustrators, street artists, tattoo artists too… The aim, really, is to give free rein to every artist to reinterpret the skateboard deck as he or she wishes,” adds Polux. The same raw material is being tackled by artists from different backgrounds, using different techniques, from leather-working to pyrography, painting, and collage. There will be a stage in Brussels and others in Geneva, Berlin, and Montreal before the Odyssée Tour finishes up in Annecy. “Those are cities that are quite dynamic and open to this kind of project,” explains Thomas. “I couldn’t really see us organising an Art by Friends show in Monaco.” The decks produced for the Brussels exhibition will travel from stage to stage and the collection will keep on getting bigger in each city. “Here, there will already be 100 decks,” explains Yoo Beng. And Polux adds, “We were really keen to have a good Belgian selection, to have beautiful things to show here, but also to represent the Belgian scene abroad.”

ART BY FRIENDS X CHEZ BENG: ODYSSÉE TOUR 3 > 24/5, White and Art Gallery, rue de Stassartstraat 46, Elsene/Ixelles, 0491-19.91.99, www.whiteandart.com