Moon-Pil Shim, Erwan Mahéo, Là où les formes se répondent

Là où les formes
se répondent

Moon-Pil Shim, Erwan Mahéo
22.03 → 26.04.2026

Là où les formes
se répondent

Moon-Pil Shim, Erwan Mahéo
22.03 → 26.04.2026

Opening
Sunday, 22.03.2026
14 → 19h

Exhibition
until 26.04.2026

Lee Bauwens Gallery is pleased to bring together, for the first time, the works of Moon-Pil Shim & Erwan Mahéo. Two practices, two gestures, one shared sensibility: the perception of space as a field of relationships.

While Moon-Pil Shim & Erwan Mahéo practices differ in materials and gestures, both engage in a subtle dialogue: form never exists in isolation, but is constructed through a play of correspondences, echoes, and tensions.

Moon-Pil Shim’s work is rooted in a sensitive exploration of space, light, and depth. Executed in plexiglass, his works feature smooth, refined surfaces that capture and transform light. Often, the color does not assert itself directly, it instead emerges indirectly through reflections and variations of luminosity. Creating a shifting depth, the optical effect gives the forms a presence that is all at once material and almost immaterial. Reflective surfaces extend the surrounding space and invite the viewer’s gaze to travel and discover delicate nuances and transitions. It’s in this perceptual journey through light and transparencies that lies Moon-Pil Shim’s visual poetry.

In contrast, Erwan Mahéo’s practice is grounded in a direct, almost brutal gesture. By cutting black fabric shapes and stitching them with white thread, the artist delineate contours, like in a drawing in which lines and forms organize spaces and define structures. The strong contrast of fabric, thread and geometry suggests volume and depth on the wall surface, almost transforming the pieces to living structure. The wall, far from being a simple support, becomes the very site where the work is constructed. Mahéo open structures unfold in space, each element acting as an autonomous unit while being part of a whole composition. The result is a dynamic and free spatiality, where the boundaries of the work seem in constant motion.

The encounter between the two artists does not rely on a form similarity, but on a shared sensitivity to space as a field of relationships. For Moon-Pil Shim, space is revealed through light, reflections, and depth plays, for Erwan Mahéo, it’s built through open and expanding forms integrated within site architecture. In the gallery, their works establish a silent dialogue, where lightness and materiality, luminosity and surface, presence and openness respond to one another. Inviting the visitor to travel in these dialoguing approaches, the exhibition propose to observe how forms, rather than imposing themselves, enter into relationship with one another.

Exhibition view at Lee-Bauwens Gallery
Photography by Sebastian Schutyser

Moon-Pil Shim (b. 1958, South Korea) is a contemporary painter and sculptor who lives and works in France. He is recognized for a distinctive practice that combines color, light, and spatial perception through compositions often created by combining resin and plexiglass.

Moon-Pil Shim develops an approach based on the superimposition of colored planes and the specific use of plexiglass as a kind of membrane between the artwork and the viewer. His works are not always presented frontally: the color is applied to the reverse side of the surfaces, and it is the interaction between light, reflections, and color that gradually reveals the image as the viewer moves. Through this process, the artist invites a refined perceptual experience in which depth, transparency, and withdrawal become essential elements of the composition.

The smooth and uniform fields of color, often crossed by fine lines, create a visual rhythm and tensions between chromatic clarity and the atmospheric background. This mysterious oscillation of transparency leads to a dynamic perception of pictorial space, sometimes described as a metaphysical approach to painting.

Moon-Pil Shim regularly exhibits in Europe and Asia. His recent solo exhibitions include presentations at Lee-Bauwens Gallery and Shilla Gallery in South Korea. The artist has also been presented by Galerie Lahumière in Paris and Galerie AL/MA in Montpellier, among other private and institutional venues. He is an integral part of the international contemporary art scene, where his work is appreciated for its formal rigor, technical precision, and its ability to engage the viewer’s perception through light and material.

Exhibition view at Lee-Bauwens Gallery
Photography by Sebastian Schutyser

Erwan Mahéo (b. 1968, France) is a visual artist who lives and works in Brussels. His work explores the creative process and the relationships between architectural space and the space of thought. He creates places or situations, real or virtual, where analogy, memory, history, and dialogue become materials for construction.

The artist’s practices are diverse, ranging from sculpture to video, as well as sewing, embroidery, drawing, the organization of collective projects, and teaching. Since 2022, Erwan Mahéo has directed the Urban Space studio at La Cambre, École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels in Brussels.

In 2003, he founded the project Le Centre du Monde, an artist residency on Belle-Île-en-Mer (France), whose collection was donated to FRAC Bretagne in 2014. On this occasion, he published the essay Le Centre du Monde (description d’une sculpture invisible).

Since 2012, he has also been leading the editorial project Herman Byrd, in collaboration with photographer Sébastien Reuzé. Herman Byrd is a fictional character—an art enthusiast and publisher—behind a number of experimental publications and newspapers such as Wave IX, Le Morning (distributed in 2016 at the bar Le Night in Bazouge-la-Pérouse), and SWIM (See What I Mean), the newspaper of the sculpture studio at La Cambre (2011–2012).

In 2022, he was awarded the Mondes Nouveaux / France Relance program, for which he created an in situ work, La Sirène, in the former foghorn tower of Belle-Île-en-Mer. Since then, he has developed various projects there as both curator and artist.

His work has been presented in numerous institutions, including: La Grandeur Inconnue at Domaine de Kerguéhennec in 1993, Laboratorium in Antwerp in 1999, the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands in 2003, Fri-Art in Switzerland in 2004, S.M.A.K. in Ghent in 2012, FRAC Bretagne in 2014, Novelty Ltd – Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, and La Verrière in Brussels in 2017.

Erwan Mahéo has also exhibited in several galleries, including Unknown Places, Tim Van Laere Gallery, Dispersion, Galerie Catherine Bastide, La Grande Image, Galerie Vidal Cuglietta, White House Gallery, and Lee-Bauwens Gallery.