Staring at Joëlle Delhovren

Staring directly into the sun is a harmful undertaking. If you don’t care for all the blurry pink and blue spots you see afterwards, and you’re in the centre of Brussels today, walking around the Petit Sablon district, you might want to take a few moments to step into Galerie Pierre Hallet. There, Brussels painter Joëlle Delhovren – whose studio we visited recently for next week’s Wunderkammer – is exhibiting a fascinating selection of her paintings and paper drawings, in which people are endlessly staring straight up (or down). They’re like stills from a movie, that was paused right at the second where the perspective would shift from the people staring to the object they’re staring at. A lot is left out of the images. And that’s no surprise, as Joëlle Delhovren has been mainly interested in the people who appear in her paintings. The hybrid, figurative work – consisting of paintings, drawings on (coloured) papers and notebooks – she is showing at the gallery is interlaced with thoughts, memories, and reflections, and moves from intimate portraits to paintings that involve a more distant look – which doesn’t mean they’re less personal. The chain of cause and consequence escapes us, or even better: is very consciously left out. The world thereby created, tends to speak to the viewer directly, to the whole set of emotions he harbours. And it is up to the visitor to fill in the blind spots, whether they are ominous or warm, very near or distant. You can visit Joëlle Delhovren’s exhibition today (from 2.30 to 6.30 pm) and tomorrow (from 11.30 am to 1.30 pm) at Galerie Pierre Hallet (rue Ernest Allard 33, Brussels). These are the last days, so you might want to stop staring at the sun. It’ll still be there tomorrow!