Jean-Baptiste Brueder
Anatomy of Bricks
18.05 > 21.06.25
Façadisme, 2025
For his first solo exhibition at the Michèle Schoonjans Gallery, French artist Jean-Baptiste Brueder presents a sensitive and sculptural vision of Brussels. Moving beyond mere representation, he captures the city’s shifting essence by transforming materials and architectural elements into works that intertwine urban memory with artistic experimentation.
Jean-Baptiste Brueder explores architecture as a constantly evolving organism. Inspired by the urban landscape of Brussels, he reveals the fragility and impermanence of built forms. Through sculptures and bas-reliefs made from gyproc and repurposed construction materials, he deconstructs façades and structures to expose their hidden layers. He particularly focuses on the ephemeral forms of architecture glimpsed in the traces of Brussels' domestic interiors, made visible on open construction sites. Borrowing construction codes from observed urban phenomena—such as façadism—he strikes a subtle balance between rawness and delicacy, questioning the memory of urban spaces and how architecture shapes our perception of time.
His approach is grounded in extensive research, drawing on archival images, topographic studies, and architectural plans to better understand the urban planning challenges surrounding the construction sites he depicts. In doing so, he re-contextualises the places he explores, weaving a dialogue between local heritage and contemporary interpretation.
Adopting an in situ approach, Jean-Baptiste Brueder collects architectural fragments—window frames, cornices, load-bearing structures—and integrates them into his works. In this way, he invites us to view architecture not as a fixed, authoritative discipline, but as a sculptural, living, and malleable medium.