Pieter Chanterie

Pieter Chanterie – The Showroom, 2024

• Buda station
• Dobbelenbergstraat 25, Brussels
• Dobbelenbergstraat 87, Brussels

Three murals mark a path from the Buda station to the former building of the U.P.L. – a renowned wallpaper manufacturer that once employed numerous famous artists as part-time designers. Pieter Chanterie departs from the historical narrative and the archives of the U.P.L., intertwining it with fiction, to narrate the story of a bold female designer who journeyed along the same route to the factory every day on her way to work.

The title of Chanterie’s mural works refers to staged commercial spaces that were used to demonstrate the varieties of U.P.L.’s wallpapers in the past. Showrooms served as both samples and tools for design inspiration, perhaps even slightly resembling human-size dollhouses aimed to embody the domestic fantasies of their clients, as well as the ideas of beauty and décor. Chanterie explores feminine and queer motifs associated with the factory’s history, while also delving into the technical aspects of wallpaper manufacturing.

Implementing original U.P.L. designs in his murals, the artist revisits the techniques employed in the early days of manufacturing. During this period, patterns were hand-printed on fabric using engraved blocks and rolls, with intricate details delicately filled in by the skilled hands of the workers. The wallpaper patterns in The Showroom have been handcrafted, refusing the use of more automated techniques that accelerated the wallpaper manufacturing process. Chanterie, who adeptly transitions from miniature to mural in his artistic practice, drawing upon art-historical tradition. He employs the trompe l’oeil technique to further accentuate the blending of reality and fiction in his visual storytelling. Historical anecdotes are intricately woven into the very details of the murals, such as splatters of paint on the characters’ trousers – once tell-tale signs of the colours the workers had used that day in the factory before heading home.

About

Pieter Chanterie is a visual artist, born in 1996, in Leuven. He lives and works in Brussels.His work varies from small paintings on wood to murals, drawings, (wall) sculptures and books. There’s a large focus on the object in itself and its materiality, but also on making the 3D- or 2D-object a window to elsewhere. His visual language is a medley of contemporary and historical imagery, from infographics to Medieval miniatures. This sweet ‘n sour cocktail decorates the stage for spiritual, personal and fictional novellas.