Albert Baronian and Renos Xippas are pleased to present Off Road, the first solo exhibition of the Belgian artist Charles-Henry Sommelette at the gallery in Brussels. The show consists of a brand-new series of black-and-white charcoal and lead pencil landscape drawings on paper and on canvas.

Born in 1984 in Liège, Charles-Henry Sommelette is a master of intimacy and silence. Using charcoal and graphite, the Belgian artist captures on paper the frozen moment of gardens and country lanes deserted of any human presence. In these black and white landscapes, time is suspended, everything is calm, at a standstill, reminiscent of the photographic shot, in which the vanishing point is unique. The immobility and serenity that reign there are both disturbing and full of a gentle melancholy. In this way, the artist plays on a polarisation between anxiety and appeasement. Despite the absence of any human form, these exterior scenes are inhabited by the artist’s sensations. They are the fruit of Sommelette’s wanderings and wanderings, which he intends to summon up from his own memory impressions of the place.

” It is my own presence in the landscape that I want to account for.”