This project was born from the meeting between Zébra3, the KOMPLOT art center in Brussels and Nicolas Milhé for the Bikini exhibition during the Contemporary Art Fair in Brussels 2012. We wanted to associate our structures in order to produce and present a series new work by Nicolas Milhé during a monographic exhibition. This exhibition, scheduled to open during the Contemporary Art Fair of Brussels 2012, aimed to take advantage of the international influence of the event.

The project developed in three stages. A first period of creative residency, a phase of production of new works and an exhibition period at the Komplot art center. It is combined with the presence at the fair of the Mélanie Rio gallery representing Nicolas Milhé, thus accentuating the visibility of the artist.

"The second nature presented by the exhibition is a humanly depopulated constructed world. On the other hand, we will encounter a great botanical and animal variety. Three under-glass photographs show the concrete skeletons of tropical bungalows, destroyed - or never completed - invaded by lush vegetation. The images are enhanced with fine gold by herringbone patterns. One immediately thinks of the Third Landscape described by Gilles Clément but above all of the ruderal ecology (of the ruins) of which Mike speaks Davis in Dead Cities ; in particular the concept of Nature II which defines a highly hemerobic environment which is constituted on lands devastated then abandoned by man like a ground zero.

Another photograph of the same format takes up the theme of the three little wise monkeys which presents Mizaru, Iwazaru and Kikazaru, here associated with a fourth accomplice. This allegorical situation is reminiscent of an "animalization" specific to Orwell's animal farm.

As for the installation, whose title is particularly evocative, The free fox in the free henhouse, it takes up in miniature, with modified figurines, two recent taxidermy works by the artist. It is a microcosm under a bell on a Louis XV pedestal table: a hyena carrying a gold tooth (untitled 2009) stands next to two merino sheep whose horns are golden like those of Mme de Pompadour ( Le retour à la Nature 2011). Here again it seems that we are dealing with a small, closed allegorical world. "

Mathieu Clainchard. Brussels on 04.19.2012