Poetry as an inspiration in my work, to re-enchanting the real and the everyday in urban space or through objects. To make the invisible links visible, to become the revelator of the small, anodyne moments of life through acts, shifts and diversions.

—
Contact
monsieurdecock@gmail.com
—

Unité de Coloration
One minute of colors, 14th October 2022, from 17:47 to 17:48, 70 minutes before the sunset.
On the westside of the roof-top, 70 unhabitants-salers-visitors, in one line, carry at arm's length a coloured smoke bomb on occasion of the 70 years of the inauguration of the Unité d'Habitation.

1, 2, 3, Soleil!
The work equally refers to past and future projects. In 2020 a custom black Marcel Kint was built for Grégory's 900Km Aouste-Courtrai-Aouste journey, which was a centerpiece of the two part groupshow ECHO. This coincided with the Tour de France and the birthday of Marcel Kint, who was nicknamed the Black Eagle. Le Chagrin des Belges (The Sorrow of Belgium) was a groupshow curated by Grégory in dozens of closed bars and restaurants in Kortrijk during the first lockdown. This is also the title of a book by Hugo Claus, a bildungsroman which unfolds in the region of Kortrijk around the second World War and is widely considered as the most important Dutch-language novel of the 20th century. This title is printed in Belgium's two main languages on the black and white frames, as well as the national motto Eendracht maakt macht / l'Union fait la force (Unity makes strength). While the black bike's wheels have the Flemish colours black and yellow, and the white bike's wheels are in Wallonia's colours yellow and red, together they form the Belgian flag. The work seems to be a representation of duality, and just as the M.Kint emblem has the four colours of the steps alchemists described to turn base metals to gold. The central wheel could be perceived as the present connecting past and future, or as the sun in the centre of this solar system, the French word rayons notably referring equally to the spokes in a bicycle wheel as to sunrays. As for the future, this work announces Grégory's Tour of Belgium.

Text by Petrus Paklons

• 

WELL WELL WELL
The typography used is inspired by the sign that taunts Los Angeles and the world.
The "New Hollywood" café is located a few steps away from the window, which makes it the ideal place to present a reproduction (scale 1) of an extract of this wall drawing which is now only a memory.

Passers-by and tourists began to photograph it and post this 'fiction' on the internet: a 'utopia' that became visible and increasingly real. There was a new monument in the architectural heritage of Brussels and you could even hear people say: «Well, I live in HOLLYWOOD!». In the heart of the most coveted panorama in Brussels, the roof of a social housing unit in the Marolles district, which was previously insignificant, became an attraction following our intervention. Through a word symbolising the dream - 9 letters that the lift shafts were waiting to take on the air of Californian hills… the possibility of an island in the greyness of Brussels. The impact was immediate. From 2011 to 2020, from the Place Poelaert.

The choice to isolate the letter "W" is not insignificant: when observing the window, one notices the mirror surfaces on either side. The vision is distorted and the letter "WWW" (World Wide Web) can be read. The World Wide Web is a public hypertext system on the Internet. The Web allows people to consult pages accessible on sites with a browser. The image of a spider's web comes from the hyperlinks that link web pages together. This protocol, invented by Tim-Berner Lee in the early 1990s, works on the "request-response" principle.

"W ou le Souvenir d'enfance", a text by Georges Perec, is precisely a cross-over narrative, alternating fiction taking place on the island W and an autobiographical account. It can be interpreted as the missing link between Hollywood and the Web.

Hollywood, the Web and Perec are each in their own way looms, where fiction and reality intermingle for better or for worse. All three of them are teeming and fascinating islands of interpretation.

76,4 is permanently visible from the street.
Hosted by Michel François, Ekaterina Kaplunova, Juan Pablo Plazas and Richard Venlet.

• 

WELL WELL WELL
The New Hollywood bar will host a display of "Hollywood, Brussels" postcards for the duration of the exhibition. Customers are invited to a writing bar: they can write one of their childhood memories on the back of one of the cards and they will be collected in a treasure box.

Hollywood Brussels
This is an other project about appropriation. In october 2011, with Pierre de Belgique, we decided to create a new monument in Brussels, to become a touristic attraction. In the heart of Bruxelles, Place Pooelart, a place where everybody take pictures from the "downtown", you face an uggly social building in the Marolles. This building has 9 lift aera on his roof. We were inspired and were decided to change the vision of this place. HOLLYWOOD's letters had been painted. The Hollywood's area was born and tourists began to publish photos on internet. A way to re-enchant the real....

drooM
Learning that the 26th department of France, "la Drôme", has a phonetic twin in the Dutch language, "droom", meaning "dream", the project got it's name. Assimilating the iconic Mobil logo that represents the petroleum industry was the next step. This resulted in the reversely capitalized "drooM" logo, creating the ultimate allegory for the cause since read backwards drooM would have been "Moord" which means "murder" in Dutch. Thus, reversing the "murder" of the fossil fuel industry, it projects the dream of tomorrow.

drooM, STEALTH ART CENTER
On the 1st of April 2017 I founded drooM
Its challenge is to make twenty-six artists’ dreams
come true from the summer of 2021 within twenty-six former service stations in the Drôme (26th department of France).
Echoing Edward Ruscha’s iconic book:
TWENTYSIX GASOLINE STATIONS.

En attendant COMMEMOR
Based on the idea that Robert Filliou's Commemor proposal is still relevant, and that for the moment no war memorial has yet been exchanged, Ludovic Lacreuse has solemnly proposed the creation of the COMmission Mixte d'Échange et de Mobilier URBain: Commemurb in 2018.

With the idea that by starting to exchange our benches, our bins and our posts… we will one day manage to exchange our war memorials and "seal European reconciliation by a single powerful act and create a precedent that will one day extend to all continents, truly honour the memory of the victims of the world wars of the 20th century, remind future generations of the futility and murderous obscenity of all nationalisms, achieve the definitive twinning of the cities of Europe and its villages, transform the pompous and revengeful style bequeathed to us by history into a new and generous expression of our destiny".

The exchange of benches between the city of Rotterdam and the city of Aouste is the first exchange of the Commemurb

In this first exchange the benches face each other, with passers-by sitting on the bench looking in the direction of the other.

We are currently working on increasing the number of countries involved, so the new benches will no longer necessarily be directed towards their home city but perhaps towards one of the cities participating in the commemurb.

Realised with the support of the municipalities of Aouste-sur-Sye and Rotterdam but without any written contract.

Text by Ludovic Lacreuse

No way
Moving a swimming line…

Gardez la Monnaie
As a result of the subprime crisis, the Royal opera house of Brussels was in danger of losing its main sponsor "Fortis". It turns out that one of the bank's meeting rooms was in front of this Opera's windows. We painted this message as a reminder for them…

nuées
A work related to time and accumulation. As a young father I did not have time to create. The only moment I have for me where when my son was sleeping. "Clouds" are like a study on clouds, an organic drawing. I could stop my process at any moment. The zero degree of the drawing as the simple way of counting time. A link between the microcosm and the macroscopics as the Latin poet Virgil speaks about it in his poem "The Georgics" an example of peaceful rural poetry.

Like Bartleby
Since May 16, 2010, I produced a series of inventories, obtaining the autorisation to draw in situ and on paper, the contours of the objects lying on the desks of prominent figures in Belgian economics and politics (BEL20 CEO, M. Prime Minister Yves Leterme).
… According to Hegel, art is determined as the sensible presentation of truth. This is what I am trying to achieve through this project.

This process was born from reflecting on the notion of diverging perceptions, and on the way our society values non-artistic work as opposed to artistic work. The composition's intricacy and tension depends on the quantity of objects lying on the desk.

Aouste>Courtrai>Aouste
In order to inaugurate my exhibition in Kortrijk,
I decided to cycle from the village (Aouste sur Sye in the Drôme), leaving on the same day as the Tour de France start. A pilgrimage that I made by carrying the book "Le Chagrin des Belges" by Hugo Claus so that he could return home since the novel is set in Kortrijk. 876 km later, I arrived at my vernissage, on Saint Omer's day, September 9th 2020.

Allez Givet
Or how to play on the name of a small town "Let's go" inhabited by a nuclear power plant, part of whose coat of arms is a yellow cross… And I went from Brussels by bike on the day of a Tour de France start…

Mobilis in Mobile
A parallel between the extreme luxury of a saddle (leather used for Rolls Royce) and the natural simplicity of a stone, between speed and immobility, like the figure of the artist who has everything or nothing.

REMEMORE.
It's a tribute to my grandfather, "Omer" Decock, a Kortijk native who emigrated to France in the 1930's in search of a better life, working as a beet picker, as did many Flemings at that time. I gave myself the constraint of using only the letters O,M,E,R and this is how I came up with the french word "REMEMORE." A bit like Georges Perec and the OuLiPo. In Kortrijk, there is a very famous beer, the "Omer" from the Brewery Omer Vander Ghinste… Whose owners had the same first name for 5 generations. I made an adaptation of their iconic stained glass windows, which are part of the heritage of the city's bars.

Since April 2020 my work became the permanent sign of the Avee Gallery in Kortrijk. And with the first containment the work took an other dimension as a symbol.

"L'oubli et la mémoire sont également inventifs."
J. L. Borges

Memorandum
"To live a little more each week" is like an incantation, a kind of Abracadabra. Seven words to contain the principle of creation and to remind us how familiar it is to us in our daily lives. I summarise here in what I call a 'memo' the thought of the philosopher Spinoza, contained in his concept of conatus (literally "effort"), namely that the objective of all living things is to perpetuate themselves in their being. For the identity and projects of my stealth art centre drooM, I systematically borrow the red and blue colour pair of the American oil company "Mobil".

A priori une bonne nouvelle
I invited the participants of the Festival de la Correspondance de Grignan (FR) to initiate, like a bottle to the sea, a correspondence with a subscriber of the White Pages of Belgium by sending him good news. I had made all the Belgian directories available for this purpose.

The festival-goer could either write a piece of good news on the medium of his choice, or if he was out of inspiration, he could copy part or all of the handwritten text of the song "Une bonne nouvelle" by Mathieu Boogaerts himself.

The letter was then slipped into the red letterbox (a real Belgian letterbox from Brussels, given to the town of Grignan for the occasion) permanently installed on the façade of Ma Main Amie, the bookshop that housed the telephone directories to be looked through. The letters were sent by the festival.

Le Chagrin des Belges
As a result of the lockdown, the exhibition I had planned for April 2020 in Kortrijk was postponed to September. Instead, I decided to pay homage to Hugo Claus by taking "Le Chagrin des Belges" as an allegory of this confinment. I asked about thirty artists to illustrate "Sorry we are Claus" with an A4 drawing and my gallery Avee to distribute these two sheets in the empty menus of the closed restaurants in Kortrijk.

Grégory Decock (1979)
lives and works in Brussels

Education
2006 M.G.D., ENSAV la Cambre, Brussels

Solo show (selection)
2023 La Lune est le rêve du Soleil, Avee Gallery, Kortrijk,
with Matthieu Ronsse (duo)
Breakfast at Mains, Mains Bakery, Brussels
2022 TOUR DE SOLEIL, Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
2021 WELL WELL WELL, 76,4, Brussels
Chambre à errer, Etikhove, with Matthieu Ronsse (duo)
2020 Géorgiques, 10N, Brussels, with Jérôme Nicod (duo)
Héros-Limite, Avee Gallery, Kortrijk, with Tim Onderbeke (duo)
Aouste > Courtrai > Aouste, Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
REMEMORE., Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
2019 Made possible by, Island, Brussels
Carte blanche, Imprints, Crest
2018 A priori une bonne nouvelle, Ma Main Amie, Grignan
2014 Oblique accueille Grégory Decock, Oblique agency, Brussels
nuées, Le Cabanon, Astene [catalogue]
2013 Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le Presque-rien, Pannonica, Brussels
2012 One minute, L’Amicale, Brussels, with Sébastien Bonin (duo)
Los Marolles, L’Amicale, Brussels, with Pierre de Belgique (duo)
Editing Room, L’Amicale, Brussels, with Dimitri Carez (duo)
2011 ECHO, Gallery Stop, Venice
Prime-Eerste-Premier, act II, K+K Gallery, Brussels
Prime-Eerste-Premier, S.M.A.K., Gent
Sète, trop d’hommages, Sète, with Tabas (duo)
2010 Recent work, Hectoliter, Brussels, with Nicolas Durand (duo)
Rue de la liberté, Gallery Stop, Arles
No Way, Gallery Stop, Brussels, with Sébastien Bonin (duo)

Group show (selection)
2023 Duel, CCBinder, curated by Petrus Paklons, Puurs
1 pour TOUS, drooM, Brussels
I wash my hands of it, curated by Jan Hoet Jr, A-HA, Ghent
2022 Cendar Brussels, Galerie Zotto, Brussels
2021 Ulterieur 2020/2021, EVOLIS 91 NTGRATE, Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
Ulterieur 2020/2021, Firma, Avee Gallery, Brussels
Der Rattenfäger, DuflonRacz, Brussels
Shifter pro, 10N Menorca, Maho
2020 Ulterieur 2020, Overbekeplein, Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
ECHO, Atelier 2025, Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
ECHO, BuBox, Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
2019 Jetsam, Patria, Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
Je connais des îles lointaines, drooM, Marseilles
2018 Les Vacances de Monsieur Magritte, IAC, Grignan
2017 Dalonaz, Le Royal, Brussels
2011 Who is it, Croxhapox, Gent
Explosition, Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels
2009 The quick brown fox…, Gutenberg Museum, Friburg
2008 j’aime, Croxhapox, Gent

Curating
2023 1 pour Tous, drooM, Brussels
2021 Cheval Vapeur, François Curlet, drooM, Vercheny
2020 ECHO, Atelier 2025, with Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
ECHO, BuBox, with Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
Sorry we are Claus, itinerant group show on A4 sheets
placed in empty restaurants’ menu, with Avee Gallery, Kortrijk
2019 Je connais des îles lointaines, drooM, Marseilles
2012 Tous les deux moi(s), serie of 3 duo shows, L’Amicale, Brussels
2008 j’aime, Croxhapox, Gent

Edition/Bibliography
2017 Hollywood, Brussels, Set of 8 postcards, Croxhapox, Gent
2014 nuées. dialoog / dialogue Deel 1, Le Cabanon, Tim Onderbeke, Gent
2011 Dehors, CFC Editions, Brussels
2006 Picto(s), Editions Iselp, Brussels
Gros Mots, Brussels

Workshop
2021 Chacun son tour, la Cambre Arts Visuels, Brussels
2020 Acte de présence, with Matthew Tyson, Collège D. Faucher, Livron s/Drôme
Pièges à touristes, with Pierre de Belgique, ARBA, Brussels
2019 Au risque de la forme, with Quentin Guillaume, ESAD, Valence
2014 evidence hunting 24/24, la Cambre Arts Visuels, Brussels
2013 l’utilité de l’inutile, with Damien Aresta, ECV Provence, Aix-en-Pce
2012 in situ, with Damien Aresta, ERG, Brussels
in situ, la Cambre Arts Visuels, Brussels
2009 post bx, with Juan Aizpitarte, Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux