Thomas Lerooy
Le petit Jean

For this project, Thomas Lerooy installed the sculpture Le petit Jean on the roof of MDD.

The body of Belgium’s most famous monument is combined with the quintessential vanitas symbol: the skull. The Brussels Manneken Pis charms every tourist with its modesty and ironic charge. By modifying the structure of a given monument and shifting or disrupting its meaning, Lerooy aims to surprise the casual passerby once again. Thomas Lerooy has long been fascinated by the power of mental transport around a monument. What does such a monument mean for a community, and where does the almost instinctive respect for it come from?

Thomas Lerooy intentionally places himself in a Belgian tradition. Artists like Félicien Rops, James Ensor, and René Magritte are important to him because of their sometimes grotesque humor and the use of the skeleton as a symbol of transience and vanity. At the same time, the sculpture refers to the many stone or plaster putti placed in Flemish gardens by ponds. The material and anecdotal visual language both charms and seduces. The latent allegory plays a subtle game of attraction and repulsion, of seduction and instilling fear. Lerooy has created a new monument that can only be looked up to with awe.