METALLIC AVAU & BEN TRIPE

For the third exhibition in its cycle dedicated to Mail Art in francophone Belgium, the BPS22 brings together two artists from different generations. Metallic Avau (Roger Avau, Bruxelles, 1945) and Ben Tripe (Benoît Piret, Charleroi, 1963). Metallic Avau is one of the pioneers of graffiti in Belgium. Together with his wife, Violetta Wynants, he published the first fanzine on the subject, Aérosol. He also used the fanzine to distribute information on Mail Art, of which he was one of the first Belgian pro­tag­o­nists, organising several exhibitions in the country and abroad.

In the 1980s, Ben Tripe devoted himself to collage, painting, music, writing and Mail Art. Especially close to the desk-top publisher Ghislain Olivier (1947-2009), together they produced several pub­li­ca­tions under the name Otto Rivers, while maintaining a substantial cor­re­spon­dence with artists around the world. Along with his cor­re­spon­dents, his preference was for sending different documents, collages, cut-out adver­tise­ments, photocopies, and so on, which formed the pieces of a vast planetary puzzle.

Curator: Pierre-Olivier Rollin, Director of the BPS22