Construction, destruction, reconstruction, the never-ending cycle of life and recycling all revolve around these three activities. House on fire is the story of a house created from bric-a-brac, DIY ideas and lucky finds. It's also the meeting of the minds of Jan Melka and David Ledoux. What happens when two artists clash to exchange inspiration? Sparks fly, a flame is ignited and forms are transformed.

Jan Melka's practice spans drawing, painting and sculpture to capture humanity in a hypnotic geometry of lines, layers and improbable constructions. David Ledoux transforms the images into a sculpture of superimpositions, cut-outs and stencils. He adds and subtracts what he sees, while highlighting and confronting it with a fiery light captured through performance, photography and video. This awareness distorts the nature of his subjects. He often works with childlike renderings of houses. Jan began his series Emergency Huts in 2019, creating houses with recycled materials that take on a life of their own to become a kind of second skin. David adds and subtracts his vision of performance to capture the spark of life, balanced between creation and oblivion.

Through their eyes, the house becomes a person, alive with its own emotions, reacting to its environment and surroundings with an all-consuming inner flame. If the house is a body, then the fire is its emotion, angry, passionate, as destructive as it is reconstructive, an individual reacting to the world it inhabits.

In this work, two creative visions merge. Through a labyrinth of paintings, sculptures, photographs and conversations about different geographies, the house is set on fire, destroyed, dismantled and recreated. From their respective creative processes, inspirations and techniques, a common ground is found and an artistic construction blending two points of view emerges. Inspired by each other and benefiting from each other's experiences, individual creativity is bypassed for a meeting of minds and worlds.

The house becomes a shared obsession, an embrace. Impermanence and destruction promise rebirth.

As this work explores the steps taken to create a work, we experience the initial reflections and discussions, gain behind-the-scenes access to the genesis of an idea, as well as the desires, doubts and waiting period shared by the two artists as they establish common ground. And then the house burns down.

It's an exhibition conceived as a kind of making of, with all the layers of creation, including video, but also drawings and works in progress, assemblages, manuscripts, layouts and mini-films to show how a work takes shape.

In a world where the creative process too often disappears behind the finished product, Jan and David offer a rare insight into the tortuous routes taken by art to manifest itself. House on fire unites destruction and reconstruction to shed light on life in art.

House on fire, an exhibition by Jan Melka et David Ledoux
From 15 June to 13 July
Thursday to Sunday, 2 to 7 p.m.
Registration here

☕️ Galbi, the POUSH canteen, is open until 9pm on Thursdays and Fridays, for lunch, a snack or a drink.