Jean-Pierre ROSTENNE

Tout va bien sauf ce qui ne va pas was the motto of this atypical artist, a poetic thinker and key figure in a Brussels district that reflected his image: Les Marolles. There, he ran an all-purpose bookshop on a corner of Rue Haute. It is impossible to sum up his career with any certainty: he was a lieutenant in the Belgian army in the Congo in 1960; he spent time in Brazil, Rome, Paris and Switzerland; and for a number of years he had been making extraordinary walking sticks out of a variety of objects, which he used to stroll along the streets. "In Africa, the cane is the link between heaven and earth. In the Congo, it is an object of power. This cosmological axis serves as a support for the motley assortment of everyday objects we'll be taking for a stroll...“