Hornu (Belgium). In its simplicity, the title “Aux chose” sets the tone and announces what we are heading towards. Lucia Bru (born in 1970), sculptor and ceramist established in Brussels, questions, shakes up and fuses materials. Earth, paper, porcelain, crystal and cement mingle, creating structures that are both simple and complex.
The exhibition does not seek to impose a prior interpretation, and gives the eye time to linger on the material. In the first room, the works complement and respond to each other like a single installation. On long shelves reminiscent of the workshop, small pieces, assemblages of materials and simple shapes, follow one another in frozen imbalances, composing a eulogy of fragility. The contrast between the smooth and the rough, between the finished and the unfinished, creates a poetry of presence that is sufficient in itself. In a corner, askew stools on their high curved and undulating legs make certainties waver. These are porcelain creations.
In a small room, a video, shot in fixed shots, shows a cat invited into the workshop. His impassive presence introduces an anecdotal, light and contemplative parenthesis, without direct link with the artist’s work.
View of Lucia Bru’s exhibition, “Aux choses-sames”, at MACS Grand Hornu.
© Philippe de Gobert
© Adagp Paris 2026
In the third room, more imposing and voluminous pieces each have a specific relationship with the space and function less as a whole, the connection between them being more difficult to grasp. Their cohabitation in a museum room reinforces the incongruity of their nature and their simplicity. The scattering of cubes of Saint-Louis crystal and porcelain on the ground attracts attention. This mass, which seems to extend without constraint, refers to questions of the indifferentiation of the individual within the multitude.
The art of contrast
Two other works, always placed on the ground, play on the contrast of smooth and grainy, between a mineral growth and an artistic artifact as evidenced by handprints. Intriguing pieces combine cement with crystal: luxury and masonry assembled in a smooth enigma.
The last room is devoted to small pieces where the artist questions the press image. On a series of full newspaper pages mounted on a wooden panel, the text is covered with small cubes of white porcelain, like a silent mosaic or mute printing blocks which refer the photograph to its sole power of suggestion.
Each material carries its own expression, and it is paradoxically by charging them with no intention that Lucia Bru makes them evident.
