Intro

Catherine Menoury use contemporary and traditional media - video, digital media, painting, sculpture and installation - to deconstruct time. Her work explores the relationship between still and moving images, perception and memory, metamorphosis and evanescence.

Current exhibition:
NordArt
June 6 – October 4, 2026
Kunstwerk Carlshütte, Büdelsdorf, Germany

Demography

The series DEMOGRAPHY examines the distribution and transformation of life forms in the age of human dominance. It reflects on how certain species multiply under our influence, while others quietly recede, displaced by shifting climates and altered habitats.

Through our habits and necessities, we humans actively shape evolution on Earth. Some life forms are deliberately bred and have become among the most numerous on the planet - the unintended winners of evolution. Others multiply excessively as conditions change in their favor, while many more decline or vanish, unable to adapt to the new order of things.

Each work translates this fragile balance into visual rhythm - through subtle shifts in tone, density, and light. What grows and what fades is left for the eye to uncover, suspended between emergence and disappearance.

DEMOGRAPHY invites contemplation of our shared entanglement with the living world, revealing both the beauty and fragility of existence as it is rewritten by human hands.

Superpositions

In search of the duality between photography and video, short films - lasting from a few seconds to a few minutes - are converted into still images. Hundreds or thousands of individual frames are superimposed, merging into photographic prints distorted by the movement of their dynamic source.

These photographic prints then become the basis for paintings. Through a completely manual and analogue working process, the digital image is continued by hand. The act of painting introduces a new form of randomness: organic, physical, and intuitive. In this way, the mechanically generated image is transferred into a classical artistic method, where control and accident coexist.

These images are both real and abstract, revealing the complexity of interpreting a facial expression or a landscape. Everything seems to change, yet at the same time everything remains as it is. Time is annihilated in the process.

These are the images of our memories. Everything appears blurred and indistinct. It is the only thing we possess, yet it is inevitably lost.

Memories

MEMORIES is a series of portraits printed on titanium plates.

MEMORIES is based on thousands of hyper-realistic close-ups of faces created through a complex digital synthesis process. These random photographs of imagined personalities have been carefully selected, collected, indexed, and classified. Each portrait consists of thousands of images that have been superimposed and compiled using specially developed software.

The multitude of faces seems to merge into one phantom-like face that is hardly perceptible. In these diffuse, vague representations, we seem to recognize a familiar face or a face that reminds us of someone. Due to their metallic nature, the images do not appear static. They change with the viewpoint of the observer. Altered faces are revealed. They suddenly disappear and are lost. What emerges from the blurred memories?

The varying colorimetric densities of the portraits result from the different numbers of superimposed images, which correspond to the distribution of age groups within a population.

The portraits are printed on titanium plates, a material that is lightweight but very strong. It is both ethereal and an armor against oblivion.

Flux

FLUX is the result of in-depth research into materials that transform at an extremely slow pace. This research resulted in the creation of a process that combines various waxes and pigments to produce evolving bas-reliefs that can gradually transform over time.

The development and metamorphosis of these bas-reliefs vary unpredictably in response to temperature fluctuations. Their shape and future remain entirely unpredictable.

More than just a reflection on the climate, FLUX serves as a testimony to constant change, fluctuation, and evolution — a tribute to the impermanence of things and the fleeting beauty of the present moment.

Snowmelt

SNOWMELT is a series of bas-relief paintings made of wax, a malleable, transitory material that undergoes metamorphosis depending on the temperature, emphasising the work's ephemeral symbolism.

The melting snow we're talking about here is, in its true physical composition, an aggregate of water particles in solid form, whose appearance is the most delicate and intangible: the flakes.

Here, the accumulation of wax particles, similar to snow captured as it prepares to change state, symbolizes the transition between the solidity of ice and the fluidity of water, and is an image of fragility. The material's whiteness and velvety texture convey a sense of purity and tranquillity.

Like snow disappearing in the heat, our lives are marked by moments of transition, dissolution and renewal.

It is the idea of impermanence that characterizes this work.

Narcisses

NARCISSES draws inspiration from the transformations of living environments and the complex exchanges between species and ecosystems.

Since the 20th century, hundreds of new species of flora and fauna have appeared in many regions of the world — invited for cultivation, trade, or simply carried by human activity across oceans and territories. Together, they enrich and transform the landscapes they inhabit, generating new, ever-evolving ecosystems.

Hundreds of images of these species have been collected from scientific archives and field observations, then fragmented and processed individually. A specifically designed digital system uses these image fragments as raw material to continuously generate new, unique compositions - landscapes in constant metamorphosis, without repetition or return.

What unfolds before our eyes exists only in the present moment: a visual ecosystem in perpetual transformation, a meditation on time, change, and the interdependence of all living things.

The Sea (9,000 images)

THE SEA (9,000 IMAGES) is an evolution of the SUPERPOSITIONS series. It reinterprets the idea of merging a temporal sequence of images into a static moment: images captured on video over a certain period of time become a still image, resembling a drawing.

In THE SEA (9,000 IMAGES), this question of how to visualize space-time is pushed further by reanimating the static image in an unpredictable, permanent, and random way. A sea filmed for three minutes becomes 9,000 superimposed images, fused into a single image that is continuously brought back to life. At first glance, the animation might seem to be the natural movement of the sea. Yet this movement is generated by an algorithm, by mathematics. It is a tiny sample of time caught within infinity.

The Phantom Machine

A collection of thousands of photos, either taken by the artists or carefully selected and categorized from the internet, provide the basis for THE PHANTOM MACHINE.

These images are portraits, close-ups of faces. A software merges these faces into each other resulting in a constantly evolving flux of images.

New phantom-like faces emerge only to disappear immediately, absorbed by another, a fleeting vision that will leave only the impression of an outline. It will be the face of all faces, the blurred face of memories. A machine that feeds on faces, that creates new faces.

Sudden

SUDDEN is a series of photographic-video portraits, silent, ephemeral. It oscillates between photography and video. They seem to be static, but are in constant evolution.

The images are generated live and evolve thanks to a specially developed software. The chosen intense moment extends over a predetermined ephemeral period: from a few hours up to 30 years, the lifetime of a generation.

The evolution of the video images is imperceptible. To understand their progression, the viewer must turn away for a while.

This work is both a metaphorical representation of time and a physical experience for the observer.

Sudden: Electra

ELECTRA is a close-up of a face, in the beginning so perfect that one is left with the impression that it is the face of a doll. The image section gradually changes. The camera scans the face and reveals completely new aspects. The face unfolds. Is it a woman, a man? The viewer witnesses this development which eventually ends in degeneration.

Sudden: Maly

MALY unveils a birth. Two screens are opposite one another. On the one hand, there is the face of the woman suffering while giving birth; on the other, her child named MALY who comes into the world each day, little by little.

The moment chosen begins with the expulsion of the child and ends when MALY is totally out of his mother’s womb. This moment is portrayed from one angle on the first screen by the increasingly acute ecstatic pain shown on the mother's face. And from a different angle on the second screen with the gradual appearance of the child's body. These two views begin and conclude together when the body of the baby is totally out of the mother's body; when the countdown, that is, the remaining lifetime for MALY, has started.

Sudden: Guards

Ten video portraits of military guards (English, Monegasque, Portuguese and Belgian) will keep watch from dawn to dawn, day after day.

As time goes on, this maniacal surveillance will evolve and disintegrate. Their headgear, symbol of their importance, will hinder them. Their ability to stand in a fixed position, symbol of their strength, will cause them pain.

This maniacal surveillance sometimes seems to turn towards the onlookers, sometimes towards the comrade who is watching on a screen to the side. The esprit de corps disintegrates and suspicion of the others and one another, reaches its peak in order to plunge back into solitude and the difficulty of holding onto the time that is needed.

Sudden: Ana

ANA is celebrating a birthday. Two children are about to blow out the candles on a cake. Behind this apparent cosiness of the moment, tension mounts.

Leftovers

LEFTOVERS is a video that shows a family dinner which is shared by a mother and her two daughters.

The table is a collection of anachronistic elements: a Chinese tablecloth, glasses and a carafe, cutlery and silver plates.

These anachronisms are reflected in the characters. These three women seem to dine together and share the same meal, but the table, cut digitally into three indistinct pieces, does not present the same time for each of the characters. It is an allegory of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The courses, limited in quantity, are chosen for the periods of life they represent and for the utensils they require.

The impression that there is a communication between the three is misleading. They seem to look at each other, but don't see each other. Each of them remains in their solitude.

This meal, a cultural and social ritual, is also the image of the difficulty of helping oneself, of taking one's place, of observing and judging. It highlights the difficulty of using language in expressing one’s own universe to others.

Red

The face of a dreamer, who at first seems contemplative, loses mental balance. His thoughts drift to violence, consuming all his mental and physical powers. He becomes absorbed.

A specially designed libre arbitre mechanism allows a machine to decide when and how these irruptions of angry thoughts, dreams, and oppressive worlds will erupt. What is caused by our own will and what is not?

These images of violence invade this face and transform it into an angry and hateful figure.

The oppressive images that give this video their rhythm, their rapidity and the constant tension, as well as the evolution of the sound, create an audio-visual conflict. It causes the viewer to become blind and a powerless witness of these inner and outer conflicts.

Compositions

In the movie industry's postproduction, node-based visual programming languages are used to create special effects. These very complex scripts generate visual effects like explosions, bullet impacts, bleeding wounds etc.

The scripts are represented by node graphs, still images themselves, fixed in time, which resemble delicate structures, rhizomes that reveal the movement of the image sequence. They decrypt time. They are portraits of the creation of moving images.

The depiction focuses on structures, compositions, which are used in real motion pictures and represent very short, fast-moving moments.

Different techniques are used to display them: static photographic prints, and dynamic video projections which become meta videos. Other techniques, like painting or stained glass, symbols of craftsmanship, art, religion and slowness, might seem anachronistic. But these compositions, which require several weeks or months of elaboration for one second of film, are a digital craft that also elevates the image to the rank of dogma.

Transitions

TRANSITIONS is a series of video films. They approach the invisible and elusive part of our being. These videos, with sound, ranging from 3 to 18 minutes, show transitions in the lives of human beings such as aging, a coma or lost memory.

Transitions: Yvonne, Marie, Madeleine... 89 years old, war orphan

For an exhibition Catherine Menoury was commissioned by the city of Brussels to produce a documentary film about the residents of the city's Quartier Nord. It is a report about the neighborhood’s residents who had been evicted from their apartments because of the "Manhattan" project. One of them was named Yvonne. She died 6 months after the filming. Her search in the memories of her past, in her documents and photos, her grief and her scars were captured on film.

Based on this intense encounter, Catherine Menoury developed another work, a mixture of documentary and artistic work, to approach and depict an intangible part: the search for oneself.

Yvonne was the first female graphic designer in Brussels. We owe her, among other things, the artwork for the beer "Perle 28", the "Palm" beer, the "Welt" cigarettes. Behind the traces of the war and its traumas, we also look at the history of Brussels.

Transitions: The Night

The Night - is it really that dark? Or is the Night the victim of our inability to see through it? We are deaf and blind, we can see at night, we are clairvoyant. We are dead and we are alive. The Night - is it black, luminous or white?

Transitions: And then Love

To stroke a dog, to caress. To caress as a sign of tenderness. To caress someone with the hand, with the lips, to pamper, to cuddle, to hug, to kiss. To caress, to touch lightly, to skim, to fondle, to pat, to tickle, to titillate, to touch, to paw, to penetrate.

Transitions: Lucie sleeps

Being epileptic. Dissect the head, cut the brain's sick part out, close again. To wake up, not shaking any more, but being without any memories.

Transitions: Lucie gets up

Being epileptic. Dissect the head, cut the brain's sick part out, close again. To wake up, not shaking any more, but being without any memories.

Contact

Catherine Menoury
Brussels / Paris

Exhibitions, residencies, collections (selection)

• Galerie Odradek, Brussels, 2027
• NordArt 2026, Büdelsdorf, Germany, 2026
• Roof Art Center, Guangzhou, China, 2025
• Hemei Arts Center, Guangzhou, China, 2024/2025
• MOORDN International Art Fair, China, 2024
• Contemporary Art Fair Guangzhou, China, 2024
• Normandie Impressioniste, Art Festival, France, 2024
• Galerie Odradek, Brussels, 2024
• Argos Collection, Centre for Audio-visual Arts, Brussels, 2023
• La Ronde, Metropolitan Museums Rouen, France, 2022
• Cinéma Moderne, Montreal, Canada, 2022
• L'Estrade, Athis-de-l'Orne, France, 2022
• Traverse Video Festival, Toulouse, France, 2021
• GARDES, support exhibition in different cultural institutions in Brussels, Belgium 2021
• Nuit Blanche de Paris, Grande Halle de la Villette (curator), France, 2019
• 5th International Motion Festival, Cyprus, 2019
• Nuit Blanche de Paris, Palais de Tokyo (curator), France, 2018
• Show Off exhibition, Brussels, Belgium, 2017
• Les Papillons de Mai, Galerie V2, Charleroi, Belgium, 2016
• Rebirth production gallery, Brussels, Belgium, 2016
• Marseille Provence 2013, European Capital of Culture, Marseille, France, 2013
• Incise, Contemporary art exhibition space, Charleroi, Belgium, 2012
• Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, France, 2012
• Museum of Contemporary Art "Les Abattoirs", Toulouse, France, 2011
• La Cinémathèque de Toulouse, France, 2011
• Centrale for Contemporary Art, Museum for Contemporary Art of the City of Brussels, Belgium, 2010/2011
• Festival Internacional de Arte Digital, Rosario, Argentina, 2010
• Festival internacional de courtas-metragens, São Paulo, Brazil, 2010
• Festival Images Contre Nature, Marseille, France, 2010
• Nuit Blanche de Paris, Musée d’art contemporain du Val de Marne MACVAL (curator), Paris, France, 2009
• Room with a view, Antwerp, Belgium, 2009
• VAD Festival, Girona, Spain, 2008
• Media Art Festival, Friesland, Netherlands, 2008
• Festival Images Contre Nature, Marseille, France, 2008
• La Monnaie, Belgian National Opera, Brussels, Belgium, 2008
• Nova Cinema, Brussels, Belgium, 2008

Live video performances for theatre and music

• Darkroom 1D & Salle Blanche, live video performances for the music of Clean!, Belgium, 2014/2017
• Musique Nonstop, live video performance for the music of Sale & Propre, Brussels, Belgium, 2013
• Theatre La Balsamine, video projection, Brussels, Belgium, 2009
• Theatre Le Méridien, video projection, Brussels, Belgium, 2008

Scenic artist

• Scenic artist / painter, La Monnaie, Belgian National Opera, Brussels, Belgium, 2000-2009

Background

• Ecole des Beaux Arts (Academy of Fine Arts), Nîmes, France
• Ecole de Recherche Graphique (Academy for Graphical Research), Brussels, Belgium
• Escape Studios Visual Effects Academy, London, UK