Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen: Monograph as Project

This monograph, written and edited by Barbara Vanderlinden, brings together reflections on and interviews with Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen by leading voices in contemporary art –including Mónica Amor, Marc Donnadieu, Helen Molesworth, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Philippe Pirotte–and is presented in a bold design by Irma Boom. For the first time, it traces Arocha and Schraenen’s full trajectory, revealing how their early solo works laid the conceptual and visual groundwork for their later collaboration. Structured as sixty-six interrelated case studies, the book redefines the artist monograph as both curatorial and historiographical form, merging scholarship with innovative design.

In Belgium, a country with a deep-rooted gusto for conceptual experimentation, Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen embrace conceptual rigor while transforming space into a dynamic visual laboratory. Arocha arrived in Belgium from Caracas via Chicago before settling in Antwerp, Schraenen’s hometown. Having developed distinct solo practices prior to their partnership, they have been working together in Antwerp for more than twenty years, becoming true collaborators who explore how we perceive and live “the aesthetic” while raising new questions about art and visual culture. Their interactive installations use geometric abstraction and optical effects to merge art and design.

Chris Dercon, Managing Director, Fondation Cartier, Paris

For more than two decades, Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen have been pursuing an artistic inquiry grounded in postminimalist critique and defined by indeterminacy. Their work unfolds between sculpture, architecture, and installation, where light, material, and perception interlace in ever-shifting relations. At once rigorous

and poetic, their practice dwells on the shimmering threshold between independence and collaboration. Their preoccupation with coexisting in difference extends to the duo’s exquisite explorations of perception’s variegated qualities: as a phenomenon rooted in physiology and optics; as it arises from the interactions between materials, light, the eye, and the environment; and as codified in representational conventions like perspective—all of which the artists expertly unmoor.

Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

The art of Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen is an explosion of energy, strong graphics, blinding mirrors, dazzling lights, and fabulous reflections. With a playful nod to fashion and modeling, their work invites us to see, move, and experience space anew.

Walter Van Beirendonck, Fashion Designer, Antwerp