Pica Pica
Atelier Pica Pica is a multidisciplinary collective made up of Boris Magotteaux (1978), Manuel Falcata (1979) and Jérome Degive (1980), living and working in Liège.
Atelier Pica Pica’s practice is collective, divergent from a traditional ego-driven artistic process, and thus closer to a platform for community reflection and exchange without an established hierarchical system, where the combination of values such as collaboration, serendipity and authenticity have created a specific modus operandi.
Based on the observation of interactions and tensions between various contexts (urban, rural and cultural), the trio’s practice is characterized by the circulation and conversion of motifs and figures from one material and medium to another (mainly painting, sculpture and installation), by gestural intuition and by an ambivalence of form (between the figurative and the abstract, the particular and the general or the universal, individual autonomy or collective interaction) that testifies to compulsory negotiation as much as to freedom and
autonomy.
The result is a singular, intuitive and distinctive visual vocabulary, where the works resonate and communicate with each other, where paintings become a propos to sculptures and vice versa, through a very free use of diversified materials (varieties of wood, metals, glass, plastics, mortars, cements, industrial paints, oils, acrylics…). In this process of research and reflection, photography is an essential working tool for the trio; a material offering context, references, socio-cultural framework and traces of energies and movement, particularly urban.
– Anne-Françoise Lesuisse, 2018
The trio disbanded in 2021. Since then, Boris Magotteaux has been working alone, while Manuel Falcata and Jérôme Degive continue their duo practice under their own names.