LMNO is pleased to present the exhibition little plants in the crannied sidewalk. This follows the artist’s six-month residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York within the framework of the renowned grant of the Claudine and Jean-Marc Salomon Foundation for Contemporary Art.

As a mischievous and expert connoisseur of the plant world, Lise Duclaux unveils the hidden beauties of the plants that spontaneously rise up stout-heartedly in New York. ‘Aliens1’ , ‘natives’ or ‘invasives’, in the course of her wanderings, she produced a number of drawings in which a few scraps of waste become entangled with the urban vegetation. Those drawings with their precious black lines dialogue with the humdrum colourful rejects of our unbridled consumption.

Questioning the ecological issues and the life force of plants, Lise Duclaux embarked a few years ago “ une récolte2”on a harvesting , roaming in “ la zone de fauchage tardif3”, a series of photographs of very tiny seeds whose splendour and diversity the meticulous printing renders through a modi cation of scale (one millimetre being rendered by one centimetre). Within the exhibition, she is presenting a selection of those seeds of plants encountered in Belgium then met again in New York’s asphalt.

Lise Duclaux has observed a few ‘aliens’, those plants that have appeared in our cities, coming from all over the world. At a time when people tend to withdraw into themselves, nature for its part doesn’t know anything about the faint-heartedness of walls.

Pacing up and down all the streets in the area round her residence, Lise Duclaux mapped the multifarious subversive presence of a Chinese plant called Tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima).

Throughout her stay Lise Duclaux also scattered the walls of her residence with different sentences, slogans or poetic odes, echoing that hand-to-hand between the human, the urban and natural forces. During the vernissage the artist will produce a performance, overspreading the windows of the gallery with drawings and diagrams based on exchanges with the public concerning the presence of a Tree of heaven a few metres away from the gallery in a owerbed facing the Baronian gallery. A dialogue will therefore eventuate between a plant that came to New York and to Brussels from a distant clime, and a force of resistance which incites us to the deepest respect.

Lise Duclaux is a French artist living in Brussels. She has recently had solo exhibitions at MHKA (2017) and at the Sint-Lukasgalerie (2017). Her work is currently to be seen in the collective exhibition ‘A-Forest’ at ISELP. Her integration projects are still present both at the LAM in Villeneuve-d’Ascq and at the MAC’s in Grand-Hornu. She had a monographic stand presented by LMNO at Art on Paper/BOZAR in 2017. Lise will have an exhibition in March, 2019 in the LLS Paleis of Antwerp.

Her editions published by ‘à lire à la loupe’ are real jewels, and some of them will be available at the gallery.