The exhibition Halfway by Laura Viale and Stijn Cole, 2016, is part of the project "a due". Arte Contemporanea in Italia e Belgio ("in twos". Contemporary Art in Italy and Belgium), conceived and curated by Laura Viale for the Italian Cultural Institute of Brussels with the contribution of the art historian Maria Elena Minuto.
Halfway is a dialogue among photographs, paintings, drawings and installations, conceived in the area around Vittel in France. The landscape in this part of Lorraine, which is exactly halfway between Turin and Ghent (the artists' cities of origin), was chosen by the artists as a symbolic place for the production of their works.
The pieces on view in the exhibition, created from natural elements gathered locally, reflect on themes that are constantly present in the artistic search of the two artists, such as the relationship between nature and artifice, the external environment and the mental dimension, and concrete experience and abstraction.
In the same year, the collaboration between Viale and Cole gave also rise to the exhibition LumièreMatière at the Académie royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, which invited the two artists to exhibit in a dialogue with some of the Academy's alumni and Master students.
