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IN BRIEF
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Invitation to travel and to discover art printing techniques, the 9th Art Biennale offers an immersion in the Louis Vuitton Travel Book collection, where rare lithographs and original works converse with the imagination of the travel diary. Driven by the collaboration between illustrator Brecht Evens and master printer Michael Woolworth, this staging brings together artists from diverse backgrounds and contrasting destinations, from Seoul to Barcelona, from contemporary Shanghai to the pure Arctic. Echoing the exhibition Brecht Evens. The Medusa’s Lair at the Thomas Henry Museum, the journey unveils limited prints, signed and numbered, and twenty-two original mixed technique pieces, inviting the public to become travelers of viewpoints, colors, and stories.
This contemporary drawing event turns the exhibition space into a true blank page, transformed by perspectives that tame the unknown as one opens a notebook on the first day of a journey. Here, surprise precedes the stroke, viewpoints become visual stories — sometimes narrative, tender, or picturesque, occasionally subtly sardonic — and the lithograph serves as a bridge between the energy of the sketch and the nobility of a craft. The 9th Art Biennale embraces the spirit of the Louis Vuitton Travel Book: to invite artists to explore a city, a territory, an atmosphere, and to bring back images that do not merely describe a place but condense its sensitivity.
The 9th Art Biennale: an Artistic Immersion through the Louis Vuitton Travel Book Collection – Spirit and Journey
The journey begins with the idea of displacement as a creative engine. Each artist ventures into a world that does not initially belong to them, navigating instinctively, revealing a hidden part of it. The backdrop is no longer a mere frame: it becomes a narrative, a motif, a reflection. The exhibition circulates the visitor through bustling urban landscapes, distant horizons, and scenes of daily life that oscillate between meticulous observation and graphic daydreaming. A common gesture runs through it: to place a gaze, then let the hand convey the wonder.
The 9th Art Biennale: an Artistic Immersion through the Louis Vuitton Travel Book Collection – Brecht Evens and the Michael Woolworth Workshop
The fabric of this adventure is anchored in a decisive meeting. In 2015, Brecht Evens joins Michael Woolworth‘s workshop for a commission related to a Travel Book dedicated to Paris. From this exchange arises a series of lithographs in limited edition of 30 copies, all signed and numbered. Beyond the commission, a complicity develops: the Flemish illustrator gradually appropriates the subtleties of fine art printing — layers of color, transparencies, reserve of white, the softness of paper — which infuses his style with a new depth.
This fruitful relationship resonates today with the exhibition Brecht Evens. The Medusa’s Lair, presented at the Thomas Henry Museum starting June 21, and its counterpoint, Drawn Travels. The Louis Vuitton Travel Book Collection. The dialogue between original works and workshop prints takes full measure here, bringing forth the very material of drawing and the nuances of the printed gesture.
The 9th Art Biennale: an Artistic Immersion through the Louis Vuitton Travel Book Collection – A Cartography of Artists
The geography of the exhibition mirrors the diversity of signatures that have collaborated with the Bastille workshop. Thus, the visions of ATAK (Indonesia), Laurent Cilluffo (Amsterdam), Marc Desgrandchamps (Barcelona), Blaise Drummond (The Arctic), Icinori (Seoul), Otobong Nkanga (Shanghai), and Liu Xiaodong (South Africa) resonate together. Each contribution invents its own visual weather: saturated chromatics, vibrations of gray, calm areas, or vibrant lines. This patchwork of sensitivities composes a sensitive map where cities become voices, landscapes characters, and routes drawn phrases.
In this polyphony, the idea of travel is less a displacement than a way of inhabiting the world through images. The works do not simply illustrate destinations; they reimagine them, as if the eye rewrote the map with each step. The panoramas tighten into details, the details open into panoramas: the scale of the gaze, like the mood of the traveler, varies with the moment.
The 9th Art Biennale: an Artistic Immersion through the Louis Vuitton Travel Book Collection – Techniques, Prints, and Rarity
The house of Louis Vuitton has entrusted the museum with twenty-two original works in mixed graphic techniques, echoed with seven lithographs printed in 30 copies between 2015 and 2024, each signed and numbered. This underscores the demands of a work where even the slightest gradient, the density of an ink, or the breath of a white contributes to meaning. At the heart of this setup, the Michael Woolworth workshop — master printer rooted in the Bastille — deploys its expertise: preparation of stones, sequencing of passes, adjustment of registers, choice of papers. The result offers that tactile presence unique to lithography, which gives the images a grain, warmth, and depth that are difficult to reproduce otherwise.
The notion of limited prints adds a tension of rarity to contemplation. Holding in one’s hands — or merely approaching — a sheet where the ink has bitten into the paper, is to feel the materiality of the gesture over time. These proofs, because they exist in a counted number, carry the memory of a process and the uniqueness of its controlled repetition.
The 9th Art Biennale: an Artistic Immersion through the Louis Vuitton Travel Book Collection – Dialogues, Destinations, and Inspirations
The project also draws from resonances with other cultural horizons. Like notebooks that celebrate cities of water and stone, the temptation to travel to Venice arises: choosing the best time to stay changes the climate of the gaze, the colors of the lagoon, and the density of the alleys. And because a travel diary is also written in the favor of a stop, exploring the establishments in Venice contributes to the experience, just as one selects a paper or an ink to reveal an ambiance.
From the global city to local crafts, the eye can veer towards a renowned ceramics village, where clay embraces fire and gestures are passed down, echoing the patience of the lithographer in front of his stone. Opposite the metropolises, other notebooks summon the power of original sites: the French gorges harbor testimonies of art dating back 36,000 years, whose telluric force and simplicity of lines resonate, in contrast, with the colored layers of contemporary works.
Finally, the taste for the journey can extend at the pace of events that punctuate the year. The cultural festivals not to be missed become opportunities to experience other scenes, other audiences, other formats, extending the gesture of the Travel Book into the city, the hall, the street.
The 9th Art Biennale: an Artistic Immersion through the Louis Vuitton Travel Book Collection – At the Heart of the Gaze
As visitors move through the rooms, they become readers, then travelers. The compositions envelop them like bustling squares or silent landscapes; the colors approach, recede, fade, awaken. The exhibition space metamorphoses into an imaginary workshop, where each sheet could be the first page of a forthcoming notebook. The nuances of narration — narrative, tender, picturesque, sometimes sardonic — open thresholds, inviting the crossing of sensitive borders rather than geographic ones. The imprint left by these lithographs and original works is not merely visual: it is also tactile, almost sonorous, like a sheet being turned, a stone being inked, a breath passing over the surface of the paper.
