Chez Le Droguiste Op Den Hoek at Salond'eL in Péruwelz

I got kindly invited by Lieve Lambrecht, a.k.a. 2L or Deux Ailes, to participate in a new artistic project in an old former bakery shop she and her spouse Chris Straetling, a.k.a. Heinrich Obst, bought some years ago in Péruwelz, Belgium. They have done some artistic events there in the past, but things got a bit sloppy due to Chris having a new job in Antwerp and Lieve on regular baby-sitting duties with her grandchild in the Netherlands. But Lieve wanted to revive the place with a new initiative called Salond’eL, and so she suggested me to do an intervention, as a first in hopefully a new series of events.

Rue De Roucourt 67 in Péruwelz

Since I had been busy for quite some time creating a book of poems consisting entirely of anagrams of the name Marcel Broodthaers, this could be the ideal opportunity to present the finished tome along with a selection of visual works of the past years. So I thankfully accepted the invitation and started pondering the exhibition concept and to finish the book.

I opted for an approach exploiting the architecture of the premisses, transforming the former bakery into a small absurd pop-up shop entitled “Chez Le Droguiste Op Den Hoek”, as an homage to Marcel Broodthaers whose memorial stone bears this inscription.* 

Rue De Roucourt 67 in Péruwelz after the intervention

Using the shopwindow permitted me to create two dioramas, each one with cross references to the other and both with a plethora of references to Marcel Broodthaers and Marcel Duchamp along with René Magritte and another Marcel: Marien. And the painter one might consider the original surrealist: Hieronymus Bosch.

The left window's scene, focussing on my “La Mer à Boire” series, consisted of wine bottles filled with salt. The backdrop a Magritte-like cloud I captured with my iPhone camera, printed on canvas and mounted on panels. In the foreground a desert-like landscape with dunes of salt in which a little boat and a variety of bottles were placed, one of them a one meter high giant glass bottle and three oversized wine glasses, all filled with salt.

The shop window on the left side

“La mer à boire” comes from a French expression: “C’est pas la mer à boire”, literally meaning “ It is not the sea to drink”, used when one meets refusal to execute a certain task or a streak of bad luck. Marcel Broodthaers also refers to this in his book “Magie”:

 Being Narcissus.

1 sleeping _ Plains of sleep. Dreams _ etc. _

2 reading _ The book as it transforms itself into images. Let every-thing literally become mirrors.

3 drinking _ After the acid wine, the gentle wine. And then the sea.

May the glass find the clearest of springs and fill with a water saltless and full of alcohol.

4 eating _ Cobras, vipers, boas, grass snakes...

... later on to be fascinated with one’s own image as with a snake. Later again, naked.

Being an Artist.

1 sculpting _ To drown like the son of a god ! What glory !... It’s better to fake. Properties : A diver’s outfit. Several fish. Flowers.

2 painting _ Witnesses appearing on stage, the merchant with his friend, the art lover. Swearing allegiance.

3 drawing _ The artist’s writing complements or replaces his images. He signs.
4 engraving _ Market study.

The Salt Bottles in the left window

There also is the, hopefully obvious, reference to the global water shortages we are about to face, of course. The labels on the bottle state: La Mer à Boire, boisson futuriste, The Attic Salt Cº.

The shop window on the right side

The window on the right side I transformed into another surrealistic scenery.
Against a backdrop depicting an egg sitting on a mussel shell, a detail out of Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece “The Garden Of Earthly Delights”, I placed a candlestick with a helix-like upward spiraling foot on top of which I put a bird’s nest - crafted out of my long beard I have grown for the past 16 years or so. Inside the bird’s nest, instead of an egg, I placed a large glass saltshaker filled with the powdered facial hair I collected over a period of 8 years from an electric razor I used to shave with. So, with the helix referring to the DNA-structure and the facial hair actually containing my DNA, this amounts up to what one could call a “Post Mortem Self Portrait While The Artist Was Still Alive”. However, I like to call it “Sel De Mère, Barbe-A-Papa” ( salt of mother, daddy's beard). This work was conceived some 27 years ago and it is still a work in progress. Here, in this constellation, one could also state that I am, effectively, a window prostitute, as I have put myself "up for sale" behind glass...

The Bird's nest with the salt seller in the right window

Besides this key work I presented a small edition of a multiple consisting of a pair of spectacles, or glasses, with the transparent lenses replaced with inward facing mirrors. Again an old idea for which I now found the opportunity and financial means to materialize it in a more professional manner. The narcissistic glasses were dangling from the ceiling with nylon wire above some specimens in a red box and the “brandname” Narciss printed on them. Inside the boxes a pair of spectacles and a leaflet. Scattered on the bottom of the window some prints of Marcel Broodthaers text “ To be an artist, to be a a narcissist” as wel as some leftover round mirrors I had cut for the glasses. Furthermore I displayed two more bottle works, one called "Pisse Vinaigre" and another one called “fArt - Gaz d’éclairage - Ode Vie”, together with two salt containers bearing the inscription “Marcel”. Furthermore a copy of the book “Marcel Broodthaers In Other Words” and a visual pun on Marcel Broodthaers posing for an advertisement for Van Laack shirts, this time wearing a “marcelleke” and holding Magritte’s pipe.

The Narcissistic Spectacles and Sel-De-Mère-Barbe-à-Papa

Details in the right window

As a last intervention I put two stickers above and on the windows of the entrance door as a small homage to both Wout Vercammen and Marcel Duchamp.

Putting up the last stickers

And Péruwelz being a border town I couldn’t resist a small intervention on the physical border with France… A “Ici n’est pas là-bas” sticker next to the ancient border stone.

Border Intervention

I spent two weekends there installing the works, and Lieve proved to be the perfect hostess and a likeminded soul sister. She gave me total freedom to use the place as I pleased. And we had some good laughs.

Lieve preparing her booklets presentation

Lieve preparing her booklets presentation

Lieve preparing her textile work for the unveiling of the show

The opening event took place on Sunday august 18th. As Péruwelz is a bit off the beaten track I did not expect a lot of people to show up and was mentally prepared for a sober occasion, especially with the bad weather and heavy rainfalls the night before and most of my acquaintances relying on public transport while there had been a train strike the day before...and this being Belgium...

Before the unveiling of the shop windows

But half an hour prior to the the official unveiling of the expo the sun came breaking through and Lieve’s partner Chris arrived and brought with him Daniel Von Weinberger. Lieve had prepared a table with a chair for me to sit at in order to sign the book and Mr. Von Weinberger promptly took possession of it. Seconds later more people arrived, and I jokingly stated that seated there was the author, Rocky Witzenstein, and he would answer all possible questions. Daniel Von Weinberger immediately played in on the joke and the whole afternoon he took on the guise of Rocky Witzenstein impersonator, a serendipitous performance act perfectly timed and executed.

Daniel Von Weinberger occupying the author's seat 

Daniel Von Weinberger signing the book

Just prior to Lieve’s wonderful opening speech/performance I was out on the street smoking a cigarette with a friend when we saw a man approaching with a falcon on his arm. My mind, being wired like it is, immediately had to think of Marcel Duchamp’s “Faux-Con” and I was so taken with the scene and the little chat with this man and his five months old falcon that I almost missed Lieve’s performance. My wife had to come out to drag me back in… But I knew things would turn out good, after all, M.D.’s spirit came by to give some support. :-)

So Lieve introduced me and the book to the fine little crowd that eventually had shown up during a performance in her role as Salond’eL, between the beautiful artifacts ( small handmade booklets and textile pieces) she exhibited in the frontroom of the former bakery. 

I sold about twenty books, from an edition of 100, signed by Daniel Von Weinberger and myself, and even a bottle of “La Mer à Boire”, in which the act of selling it became a hilarious performance piece by Mr. Von Weinberger. Somebody also wanted one of the Narciss spectacles. Meanwhile, in the background, one could hear a computer voice with a very British accent read aloud hundreds of anagrams of the name Marcel Broodthaers, played back in an endless loop. Most of the time I sported a cowboy hat in the colors of the Belgian flag as another nod to Marcel Broodthaers' statement that at the end of his life he had discovered nothing in the world of arts, not even America...

The sun remained with us for the rest of the day, and the local beer, Paix Dieu, considerably helped to raise the spirits. I was very happy and very grateful to Lieve and Chris for the opportunity given.

Entering the Salon

Happy customers 

Another Broodthaers inspired work shown inside the premisses

The exhibition was on view at Rue De Rocourt 67, until September the 22nd 2019 in Péruwelz, Belgium.

Marcel Broodthaers In Other Words 

52 anagram poems 

Each line in the poems is an anagram of the name Marcel Broodthaers

The 60 page book "Marcel Broodthaers In Other Words" can be ordered via: witzenstein(at)gmail.com

* = (Nobody, except for Broodthaers’ widow Maria Gilissen, who commissioned the stone, knows what this inscription means. I have a hunch, though, that it might have to do with the droguiste in case being a local café or pub situated on a corner nearby where they used to live… One day I hope to find out for certain.)