Michèle Schoonjans Gallery
The exhibition What Grows in the Shadows brings together the worlds of Manon Sarah Thirriot and Elium (Elise de Falletans) within a latent landscape, where matter, vegetation and narrative emerge from zones of retreat. Through their respective practices, both artists explore what develops away from the gaze — in the shadows, in the interstices, in those spaces where perception wavers and imagination takes root. Opening on 10 May 2026, this exhibition marks their first presentation in a gallery context. Michèle Schoonjans Gallery is delighted to accompany them at this stage and to present their work to the public. The practice of Manon Sarah Thirriot is rooted in a sensitive approach to landscape, conceived less as a motif than as an experience. Drawing on ancestral techniques — marquetry,...
The exhibition What Grows in the Shadows brings together the worlds of Manon Sarah Thirriot and Elium (Elise de Falletans) within a latent landscape, where matter, vegetation and narrative emerge from zones of retreat. Through their respective practices, both artists explore what develops away from the gaze — in the shadows, in the interstices, in those spaces where perception wavers and imagination takes root. Opening on 10 May 2026, this exhibition marks their first presentation in a gallery context. Michèle Schoonjans Gallery is delighted to accompany them at this stage and to present their work to the public. The practice of Manon Sarah Thirriot is rooted in a sensitive approach to landscape, conceived less as a motif than as an experience. Drawing on ancestral techniques — marquetry, turning, wood engraving — which she reinterprets through a contemporary language, the artist composes surfaces in which matter itself becomes language. The wood species, selected for their tones and grain, are not covered but revealed: colour emerges from the very structure of the material. Her works unfold dense environments, notably inspired by woodland undergrowth, where light circulates with difficulty and the eye becomes lost. Through the interplay of lines, rhythms and subtle burns that enhance depth, the surface comes alive with an almost organic vibration. The landscape is constructed in layers, oscillating between abstraction and reminiscence, until it becomes an atmosphere rather than a representation. In dialogue, Elium develops a narrative universe in which objects tip into the realm of the living. Working from familiar forms, she constructs devices in which reality shifts and becomes charged with symbolic meaning. For this exhibition, she draws inspiration from the universal gesture of throwing a coin into a fountain to make a wish. Lotus flowers and reeds, crafted from coins, emerge from a basin evoking these sites of projected desire. These metal fragments, carriers of past wishes, appear to transform into vegetal forms, as though the wishes themselves had taken root in water. Surrounding this installation, drawings extend this imaginary realm, within a space where the boundary between nature and fiction becomes porous. Through this process of metamorphosis, Elise de Falletans questions what objects retain of our projections: what we deposit within them, what we hope to receive in return, and what quietly endures. Between landscapes of wood and vegetation born from monetary fragments, What Grows in the Shadows composes a hybrid territory where natural matter and everyday objects meet. In this suspended space, the works suggest that certain forms — vegetal, symbolic or imaginary — can only emerge away from direct light, in those discreet zones where transformation takes place slowly.Opening Hours
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | Closed |
| Wednesday | Closed |
| Thursday | 12:00 - 18:00 |
| Friday | 12:00 - 18:00 |
| Saturday | 12:00 - 18:00 |
| Sunday | Closed |
| ... and by appointment | |