In 2006, a group show at the Artpero gallery in Crupet enabled him to present his first creations. This was the start of an adventure marked by numerous exhibitions and wonderful encounters in Belgium and abroad.

Since the discovery of the first nails, Fabrice Magnée has been criss-crossing the country, his attention sometimes drawn to a building undergoing restoration. There, he may find a few nails forged in winter long ago by a man, woman or child. For the artist, reviving them is a way of keeping alive the memory of these people, of our history, of our roots. The nails are deformed by extraction with a crowbar or pliers. They are not reworked, if at all. Impossible. Too brittle.

“I observe them to find the best possible combinations to create my pieces. Sometimes a sculpture sits in the workshop for months because I can’t find the nails needed to complete it.”

Fabrice Magnée draws his inspiration from observing the people around him. People pass each other, occupying the same space but living different experiences, alone in the world around them. His sculptures are full of these parallel lives. That’s how, from a pile of nails, figures emerge, walkers, stilt-walkers, isolated or gathered… “Instinct, chance, I’m instrumental in the emotion of studio life. I don’t tell stories. I distribute images. Yes, in that order, my sculptures are images. The public takes hold of them, and each person, with his or her own emotions, rewrites his or her own story.”

Avignon-based gallery owner Marie-Marguerite Buhler writes: “Behind the hardness of metal hammered by childish hands lies the tenderness of the artist giving life and freedom to those who have suffered by creating nails and arranging centuries-old wooden structures. The lightness of stilts at varying heights, a ballerina’s dance on the wire, curved, elongated or shrunken rods in shadow on the walls… all echoes of distant ancient frameworks. Fabrice loves encounters and he says so, well hidden behind his welding machines, with a burst of laughter, quickly replaced by a question for the spectator. He’s a recognized artist, close and original, a tightrope walker with metal…delicate and strong… to be discovered without delay!”