dépendance

Docent is pleased to announce that dépendance, a Brussels-based gallery has joined its community. We wanted to take this opportunity to give you more insights on its program and artists, more particularly on Monika Stricker and Alfred d'Ursel.

dépendance
Rue du Marché aux Porcs 4-8-10
1000, Bruxelles
Belgium

Since 2003, dépendance has cultivated a space for contemporary art that transcends the boundaries of commercial representation, focusing instead on fostering critical dialogue and long-term artistic relationships. From its earliest days, the gallery introduced artists to Brussels who would go on to shape contemporary art discourse, often hosting their first major international exhibitions. Sergej Jensen (2003), Haegue Yang (2004), Michaela Eichwald (2005), Jana Euler (2010), and Peter Wächtler (2013) are among the artists who debuted pivotal early works with the gallery.

Dépendance’s curatorial approach reflects a careful balance between emerging voices and established practitioners, facilitating a dynamic exchange of ideas. Artists like Thomas Bayrle, Michael Krebber, Richard Aldrich, Ed Atkins, Katja Seib, and Graham Little presented their work in Belgium for the first time under dépendance’s auspices, underscoring the gallery’s role as a conduit for new perspectives in contemporary art.

In 2014, dépendance expanded into two spaces on rue du Marché aux Porcs in Brussels, creating a versatile environment for exhibitions and collaborations. Further growth in 2024 introduced renewed spaces aimed at broadening opportunities for artistic experimentation, marking a new chapter in the gallery’s development.

Monika Stricker’s paintings embody a timeless, classical quality while often exploring themes of transience and ambiguity. Her choice of provocative subjects elicits strong emotional reactions from viewers. By blending traditional aesthetics with modern critical perspectives, Stricker delves into complex topics such as vulnerability, identity, and the dynamics of power.

In her earlier series, Stricker’s portrayal of faceless male figures with omitted genitalia challenged conventional patriarchal symbols, highlighting the fragility and constructed nature of identity. Her recent work shifts focus to a range of motifs, including breastfeeding primates, dogs, and fragmented human forms like feet. These elements, deeply intertwined with her personal fears and fascinations, invite reflection on intimacy and the existential human condition, positioning viewers in roles that oscillate between participant and observer.

Her art compels audiences to confront uneasy truths about dependence, submission, and exposure. By featuring subjects like nude men, animals, or her own body parts, Stricker strips away societal veneers, leaving behind a raw, disconcerting intimacy that blurs the line between vulnerability and strength​.

Alfred d’Ursel paints with a velvet, thin layer on wooden panels, creating works that are quiet yet deeply evocative. His paintings employ a cinematic approach to image building, weaving a detached auto-fiction that explores fear, loathing, and the intangible voids left by disappearance or anticipation. Through subtle colours and minimalistic outlines, d’Ursel constructs anonymous silhouettes, lonely figures on distant horizons, and fleeting narratives that resonate with an eerie sense of absence.

His paintings are enigmatic and atmospheric, capturing transient moments with an unsettling yet tranquil tone. Like stills from a mysterious film, they offer a glimpse into unknown stories while withholding their full context. The intangible quality of d’Ursel’s works immerses viewers in a space of introspection, where the boundaries between what is seen and what is hidden blur, amplifying their opaque and haunting beauty.

Lucie Stahl works across various mediums, including sculpture, installation, and digital media. Her art explores the concept of liquidity in various forms, such as financial liquidity and the fluidity of gender, identity, and images.

Through the use of found objects and imagery, Stahl delves into the excesses and pitfalls of modern consumer culture, examining themes like branding, consumption, addiction, and dependency. Stahl is renowned for her poster-like works made using contemporary photographic techniques.

She arranges everyday objects such as spices, ties, magazines, and wheels on a scanner and encases the resulting prints in polyurethane to make them appear like distant objects. Adding short text fragments to these works, Stahl humorously expresses her perspective on social and political events and the competitive nature of the art world.

Using language similar to American stand-up comedy, Stahl peppers these prints with witty anecdotes and observations recounted in a soliloquy style. The combination of text and reproduced objects creates a discursive tension, producing an analytical and distancing effect.