Soft Gravity Holds

For her first solo exhibition with Objects With Narratives, Olivia Cognet began with water. Brussels is a city where fountains tell stories. The most famous, Manneken Pis, transformed a tiny, irreverent sculpture into an enduring monument, an idea that stayed with her.

At the centre of the exhibition is a monumental fountain in black ceramic: a contemporary response to the Brussels tradition of the fountain as a character. Here, however, the figure has disappeared. Only the source remains.

Dense, mineral, and almost brutalist, the fountain becomes an architecture of matter, with water emerging as though from dark rock. Around it, Cognet has developed a new series of furniture forms that are more austere and architectural, shaped through repetition and volumes that respond to one another.

The exhibition also marks a meeting point with Objects With Narratives, whose international community of artists and designers explores the object as a carrier of stories across sculpture, design, and architecture.

While ceramic remains central, Cognet also works with lava, wood, and glass—elemental, almost geological materials shaped into living forms and marked by the hand. Often associated with sun-filled landscapes and a sensual use of matter, her work takes on a denser, more vertical character in Brussels.