"Mijn werken functioneren bovenal als ‘generatoren van beelden’. Ze bevatten verbeeldingskracht veeleer dan een vaststaand beeld. Ik houd erg van het puzzelidee. Uiteindelijk maak ik de stukken zodat ze zo goed mogelijk in elkaar passen. Het beeld dat daaruit voortkomt is een gevolg van dat in elkaar klikken. Des te beter als aan het eind stukken hemel de korenvelden verdringen."

On the crossroads between dream and reality

Florent Bex Le rêve est une hypothèse, puisque nous ne le connaissons jamais que par le souvenir.[The dream is a hypothesis, because we only know about it from memory.]

Paul Valéry 

Sometimes memory is very clear. You can recount the story in a very detailed manner, describing the characters, the objects, the context and the situations. But sometimes you wake up with the annoying feeling – one that may follow you around for the whole day – that you have had a dream without remembering what it was about, without recalling any images or thoughts. Some dreams are very clear. Others escape our powers of comprehension because they go beyond the logic of meaning. And then there are those dreams that suddenly stop: stories which end mid-sentence and of which you will never know the ending. 

During my childhood it often happened that I had to go to the toilet urgently in my sleep. I’d get up, go to the bathroom and, to make sure I was awake, I’d pinch myself in the face in front of the mirror. Each time I’d wake with a start and return to bed to find it all wet. 

Our experiences determine our behaviour for the great part. But our memories of dreams, both pleasant and unpleasant, influence us as well. 

In a dream I found myself in a particularly beautiful place. But all my attempts at remembering that beautiful place afterwards were in vain. The image that had engulfed my sensory perception had evaporated and gone. All that remained of it was a vague feeling. I look at my feet and I can see I have put on two different shoes. I am speaking, but nobody around me seems to hear me or see me – as if I don’t exist. And there are also dreams which turn into a nightmare, in which you can no longer trust sensory perception, and in which this perception is seriously put to the test. You approach one thing, a person who attracts you, but as soon as you get closer you suddenly see something else, not at all what you expected. There are the doors that you open whereby you suddenly end up in a totally different world. There are the closed spaces of which you cannot find the exit. One day I strangle a woman I don’t know at all – I, who would not even hurt a fly. In the course of the day I meet the woman, whom I had never seen before, twice on the street. To my surprise she looks at me, frightened, and hastens past. Did she dream my dream too? This scares me so much that I don’t dare to go out any more that day. When I was about 17, something very strange happened to me. I was in the Latin–maths department at school. We had eight hours of maths a week and every evening we had to solve a problem for the next day. I often went to sleep without having found the solution, and to my amazement I would wake up the following morning and find the resolved problem by the side of my bed. Because I remembered nothing of that night, my only conclusion was that I’d continued searching in my sleep and had found the solution; and in order to not forget it, I’d woken up and written it down. … 

Biography of Cédric Noël

°1978, Argenteuil (F) 

Solo Exhibitions

 2007

–         SENSASS, Galerie Martin Van Blerk, Antwerpen 

2006

–         zobjeyxs, Indian Caps, Antwerpen  

Group Exhibitions 

2007

–         Zone de turbulences, Wolubilis, Bruxelles/Brussel 

2006

–         Exact, UTIL, Bruxelles/Brussel

–         HISK, Galerie Ravenstein/ Ravensteingalerij, Bruxelles/ Brussel–         Prix Médiatine 2006, La Médiatine, Bruxelles/Brussel 

2005

–         … And Lucy Liked it!, HISK, Antwerpen

–         Extra Features Series (1), dvd-project/projet dvd, Antwerpen–         Without Borders, Museum of Architecture, Tallinn

–         La Belgique visionnaire.C’est arrivé près de chez nous,Palais des Beaux-Arts/Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, Bruxelles/Brussel 

2003

–         Tracce di un semario, Galleria Via Farini, Milano

–         Peau d’Âne 3, Galerie Soardi, Nice. 

2002

–         Co-incident, Cagnes-Sur-Mer

–         Corso Superiore de Arte Visiva, San Francesco, Como  

Publications  

–         …And Lucy Liked it!, Antwerpen, 2005

–         La Belgique visionnaire. C’est arrivé près de chez nous, Bruxelles/Brussel, 2005

–         Giulio Paolini, Milano, 2003

–         Colifichet, Marseille, 2002