“Tcharendar”: Sébastien Bonin Explores Memory, Craft and Repetition at Alkinois

The exhibition “Tcharendar” by Belgian artist Sébastien Bonin opens on 13 March 2026 at Alkinois in Athens, curated by Alix Janta, bringing together sculptures and paintings that investigate memory, repetition and the quiet gestures embedded in rural craftsmanship.

The title of the exhibition refers to the “day of bread,” a recurring moment within the cyclical rhythm of rural life, where actions are defined less by singular events than by repetition. Within this framework, Bonin turns to objects rooted in agricultural and domestic traditions, tools, implements and handmade forms, treating them as vessels of memory and cultural transmission.

At the core of the exhibition lies a structural principle: the multiple. Forms appear in pairs, duplicates or sequences, emphasizing repetition not as decoration or mechanical reproduction, but as necessity. A shoe implies its counterpart, a pattern demands another, and a gesture exists only because it can be repeated. Through this logic, repetition becomes a mechanism through which forms endure and circulate across time.

Bonin’s sculptures subtly displace utilitarian objects from their original functions. Shoes transform into bear-like feet, mountain crampons appear as autonomous sculptural forms, while tools such as hay-beating sticks, stacks of unleavened bread or straw mats used in cheese-making are cast in bronze. This shift of material introduces a striking tension: bronze monumentalizes objects that were originally designed for wear, replacement and cyclical use.

The paintings extend this exploration through layering, duplication and fragmentation. Images of fences shaped by the movement of the sun, shoemaking patterns, textile tools and elemental gestures appear within structured compositions. Human figures occasionally enter the frame, sharpening, carving, working, but they do not function as portraits. Instead, they act as carriers of gestures, part of a continuum of shared knowledge and inherited practices.

In Bonin’s work, preservation does not emerge as nostalgia. Rather, it oscillates between continuity and reactivation, between what is passed down uninterrupted and what reappears through rediscovery. The past is not simply remembered; it is reintroduced into the present through form.

Trained in screen printing at ENSAV La Cambre, Bonin initially expanded his practice through photographic experimentation before establishing painting as a central axis of his work, particularly after his 2015 exhibition at Wiels in Brussels. For the artist, painting operates as a cosa mentale – a mental construction situated between abstraction and figuration, shaped by documents, art history, literature and fragments of contemporary visual culture.

Rejecting the modern obsession with originality, Bonin approaches interpretation as a fundamental cultural condition. In an era defined by constant comparison and reproduction, repetition in his work does not signify imitation but structure. Through processes of addition, erasure, layering and transformation, images become both physical objects and mental spaces.

Alongside his artistic practice, Bonin founded the exhibition platform Island in 2012. His work has been presented at institutions including Wiels, BOZAR, Botanique in Brussels, Karl Marx Studio in Paris and the Ixelles Museum.

With Tcharendar, Bonin invites viewers to reconsider the silent knowledge embedded in everyday objects and gestures. Through repetition, craft and material transformation, the exhibition reveals how memory persists not only through stories but through the forms and movements that quietly endure across generations.