Sous scellé 1978

Editor: This is Pierre Alechinsky's "Sous scellé" from 1978, a mixed-media collage incorporating watercolor and other materials. There's a playful quality to it, like peering into a child's secret world of stamps, seals, and half-formed stories. What do you see when you look at this? Curator: Oh, it whispers to me of memories! See the delicate watercolor washes playing peek-a-boo with fragments of old letters. It's as though Alechinsky is inviting us to piece together forgotten messages, those little postcards filled with hurried thoughts sent from Brussels. Doesn't it feel like rifling through a beloved grandparent’s attic? I imagine him, humming to himself, creating a visual diary of ephemera… What sort of impression does it leave on you? Editor: I think you're right. It's more personal than I first thought. But are the colours meant to evoke those specific nostalgic feelings? Curator: Precisely! They speak of faded inks, the ghost of handwritten words, a little rose-tinted perhaps. Like a half-remembered dream… notice how the hard edges soften into fluidity; it’s all a play on what remains when memory starts to unravel. He captures, with childlike candor, that fragile beauty of time gone by! Editor: That’s a lovely way of putting it. It makes me want to search for old letters. Curator: Maybe we should all take some time and write a letter, seal it with wax and let someone into a tiny fragment of our worlds… just like Alechinsky!