For the exhibition Figures, artist-illustrator Benjamin Monti is invited, as a curator, to draw from the sources of his images. His work is fueled by an ongoing search for printed materials of all kinds, which today forms an impressive collection of what is called “modest” art, ranging from children’s notebooks to artifacts of popular culture. Here, he indulges his obsession with a very particular type of image: a series of lithographs depicting various life-size human figures, created by the Wentzel printing house in Wissembourg between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Singular archetypes representing a social group or function, they reach us today in all their obsolescence. Through vibrant colors and the absurdity of their postures, their humanity resonates. This precarious humanity is echoed in the Liège puppets that Benjamin Monti dialogues with these images. Rough, they touch us with their humility, their frugal simplicity. In contrast, and to navigate from paper to wood and back, Benjamin invites the wood engravings of illustrator Olivier Deprez, preparatory to his printed work, which in turn show us timeless figures, ageless silhouettes embedded in material.