Painting After Painting showcases the work of over seventy contemporary painters. Without striving for completeness, S.M.A.K. attempts to outline the recent developments and trends in the medium. Artists today draw on the motifs and techniques of the past, but equally explore and push the boundaries of the discipline. Some create narrative works addressing their daily lives, political and social issues, or questions of identity, gender and representation. Others adopt a more abstract or formalist language and explore the relationship with other contemporary image-making forms.

I showed two Colorscapes showing the color charts of two moments in Ostend

The expo came with a nice catalogue published by MER

During the Egmont Art Days, Yolande Debontridder curated a groups how at Dorotheum, the auction house for classical art.

Around the theme of “beyond horizons” she selected works from: Stijn Cole Antoinette d’Ansembourg, Charlotte Cuny, Céline Cuvelier

Anne Marie Finné, Rémy Hans, Megane Likin, Alba Suad & Emilie Terlinden

Analyse van een verschijning (het landschap) / Emergent

In this group exhibition at Emergent I presented a work from the new series “158cm” for the first time. The work consists of a double-folded photograph of a view of a Swiss glacier in Arolles. This is placed in a plexiglass box, the size of the box is the same size as if the photo had not been folded. The fold is hung at 158cm high, coinciding with my eye level and forming a horizon. I also showed some “souvenirs” and a couple of drawings from the “two steps aside” series I made in 2013.

Other artists in the show where: Marcel Berlanger, Dirk Braeckman, Eric Colpaert, Marc De Blieck, Griet Dobbels, Jan Kempenaers, Mira Sanders, Philip Van Isacker, Laura Viale,…

Chaque nuit j’entre dans les creux des troncs et j’écoute @ Galerie C

2 trees
This series consists of two sets of ten souvenirs each with the same tree on them. I photographed two trees at different times on a walk in the Bourgoyen in Ghent, the composition slightly different. Each time, only two versions of the same tree are visible, one on the shelf below and one on the wall. The other states are hidden from view. The work was shown in the expo “Chaque uit j’entre dans les crux des troncs et j’écoute” at Galerie C in Neuchâtel Switzerland.

Alt+1000 photo-festival

Longest day 21/6/2023

This work shows the evolution of colours during the longest day of 2023. Every minute the landscape in which the work eventually became presented was photographed. The colours of the sky, the pine tree row in the background and the field were abstracted to 1 average colour and edited together as a timeline. The work was part of the alt+1000 photo festival near Lake Taillères in Switzerland

àmare

àmare is the first edition of a sculpture walk in the beautiful area around the Damme canal in Bruges and Damme. On the bridge at bistro ‘t Apertje I integrated 3 concrete pedestals that copied the profile of the bridge. On top were placed 3 “souvenirs “. 3 Maas boulders with a flattened top were placed so that the top is level with my eye level. They form a horizon that cuts the tree-lined landscape.

El cuarto Flamenco / AVALANCHA

The Flemish Room. Avalancha is the second exhibition presented by Hilario Galguera
Gallery in Madrid and will open on the 19th of November.
The group show is comprised of works by four Belgian artists: Willem Boel, Maxime Brigou,
Marie Cloquet and Stijn Cole, whose predominant materiality, as a symbolic, conceptual and
expressive component, is articulated as a consequence of the superficialization of ideas, the
devastation of the landscape and the destruction of the territory, while emphasizing
individual, subjective and philosophical processes in relation to the contemporary world.
The word "avalanche" within the title implies an external, inevitable and unstoppable
phenomenon, as an analogy to different aspects of the four artists' practice, seductive and
aesthetic, but equally entropic.

In Stormloop 2022, a group exhibition in Herentals with the theme “water”, I placed a 1:1 sculpture in the church. The work was in dialogue with a 16th century painting that represents Noah entering the ark together with his family. The work is a replica of a part of the French coast that is flooded twice a day by the sea and which, as the sea level rises, will disappear forever. In a second chapel, I combined a small triptych representing the colours over the sea from Fisterra (the end of the world) with the fantastic Retable of St. Crispien and St. Crispinian, which depicts the martyrdom of the patron saints of the skin flayers and the cobblers (for them also the end of the world :)).

Time and Tide – Ter Posterie Roeselare

Time and Tide was a groupshow at Terposterie with Frank & Robert, Tinus Vermeersch, Stief Desmet, Joost Gevaert and Stijn Cole

curated by Louis-Philippe Van Eeckhoutte

Memory shop – Casa Wabi Puerto Escondido

group show curated by Nicholas Bourriaud

Een boom is meer dan er staat – Egelantier Otegem

This expo was about trees, I showed there 2 flags in the garden showing a crown of the acacia that was visible from our bedroom window in our house in Chimay.

Endgame – Orto Botanico Corsini Puerto Ercole

In the exhibition Endgame I am showing 2 bronze sculptures entitled “Cancale 1:1 #4” and “Cancale 1:1 #5 », as well as a photographic sculpture called “Souvenir 2021”. Both could be seen as documentary sculptures: the bronze works are replicas of parts of the Breton coast and the photograph was taken in a nature reserve in Ghent, the city where I live. The photographic image allows me to place what appears at first sight to be an ordinary cutout of a disordered Belgian landscape in the context of a Botanical Garden. This inclusion adds some less appealing species to their collection of carefully chosen Mediterranean plants. The picture is mainly defined by the presence of wild nettles, an invasive species that often supplants nature in Belgium because there is too much nitrogen in the air. Other more fragile species are disappearing and biodiversity is under threat. The monumental photographic image (2 x 3 meters) consists of two parts connected by hinges that give the image a spatial dimension and allow the light to fall on the work in two different ways. Due to the aluminum surface of the print, the colors from the environment are reflected in different ways on the image. This gesture of the folding the image in two gives it a structure, the overflowing cutout of nature becomes a land-scape. The work stands on a table making it seem like an altar in its 

surroundings.

Post tenebras spero lucem – Hilario Galguera gallery Mexico City

curated by Hilario Galguera

The intimate consciousness of time – Irène Laub Gallery Brussels

This group exhibition was a first collaboration with my Brussels gallery Irène Laub. I showed 3 “timescapes” from my series 60 journées d’été and some “souvenirs”. In addition, work by Bernard Villers, Gauthier Hubert, Gudny Rosa ingimarsdottir Athina Ioannou & guillermo Mora

La colère de lud – BPS22 Charleroi

La colère de lud brings together some forty works recently acquired by the Province of Hainaut and, for the most part, never before exhibited in the museum. Starting from the notion of dispossession, the chosen works express experiences of uprooting, occupation, destruction, exhaustion; but also of resistance and attachment. The exhibition thus evokes in a poetic, romantic and political way different situations of dispossession that human beings can be led to live, in a more or less conscious way.

Borrowed from a book by Julius Van Daal, the title of the exhibition refers to the revolt of English workers who, at the height of the industrial revolution, tried to resist technical progress. Led by the legendary general Ned Ludd, these insurgents destroyed machines, which in their eyes were responsible for the dispossession of their know-how, their property and their rights.

In a capitalist society dominated by the logic of possession, at a time when fundamental human rights are still flouted and freedoms are constantly being called into question, how does the human being construct himself on this succession of dispossessions? Through works in a variety of media and aesthetics (painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, tapestry, etc.), Ludd’s Wrath highlights different forms of deprivation (of time, territory, identity, work, etc.) but also different voluntary approaches aiming to free oneself and to think more freely about these constraints.

De Terre et de ziel – Biënnale d’Enghien 2020

For the Enghien Biennale, I chose the chapel and French garden as the location to create a new work for. In the formal garden, I presented a large photograph on a table. The image represents an uncontrolled, unkempt forest scene. The image is divided into 2 halves that are at an angle to each other. The image is printed on a brushed aluminum so that the colors of the environment reflect in the image and the position from which you look as a spectator thus colors the image. In the chapel I showed three “Maaskeien” on neo classicist pedestals of which the part above my eye level has been sawn away. The sawn surface was polished. Through this simple action the boulders become sculptures, form a horizon and refer to the landscape.

Toutes les lignes droites sont courbes – Villa Carpentier Ronse

During the summer 2020, the exhibition “Toutes les lignes droites sont courbes”, curated by Yolande De Bontridder and Jennifer Plasman, was held in three exceptional locations within the city of Ronse (BE). Aiming to reflect the different aspects of Belgian and international contemporary sculpture, the group show brings together the works of twenty visual artists, both established and emerging.

The sublime Villa Carpentier, designed by Victor Horta, was the high point of this project. A group of contemporary sculptures will punctuate the vast Villa’s garden, offering a scenography that departs from the usual presentation codes existing in neutral museum spaces.

Van Eyck in depth – GUM Ghent

These two triptychs were made for the opening exhibition “Van Eyck in depth” in the Ghent university museum GUM, which is located in the botanical garden. I based the colors on three views of a forest landscape near Chimay (where I lived) and on those of three views in the botanical garden in Rio de Janeiro. 2 different interpretations of paradise, on the one hand a “wild” landscape close to home, on the other a composed exotic garden.

Landscape 2.0 – Buda Kortrijk

When we decided to move from the wooded, rural Chimay to Ghent, I decided to make a series of souvenirs in which I tried to capture the landscape. During the spring I went looking for solitary trees in a field and had these images developed analogously. I put those lambda prints out in the sun during the entire summer (from June 21 to September 21), half covered. The sun has tarnished the photos, time has done its job, the image has faded. In Kortrijk I showed the series and I also placed 2 billboards in the public space.

Expo with Stefan Peters & Meggy Rustamova

GENESIS – LAC Narbonne

Berlinde De Bruyckere, Peter Buggenhout, Johan Tahon, Koen Vandenbroek, Renato Nicolodi, Ronny Delrue, Peter Decupere, Jonas Vansteenkiste, Pieter Vermeersch, Wesley Meuris & Stijn Cole

in dialogue with the collection of the LAC: Piet Moet, Francois Morellet, Sol Lewitt, Yves Klein, Marlene Dumas,…

curated by Christa Vyvey

The Gulf Between – De Warande Turnhout

With ‘The Gulf Between’, the Warande presents an exhibition about black, white and everything
in between. The title refers to the first American film production in technicolor. This film from 1917 has largely been lost. Only a few fragments survived.
The invention of film and, earlier, of photography
photography ensured that for more than 50 years – until well after WWII – people got to see their information about the world in black and white. The impact of this on art is undoubtedly enormous. For although works of art existed in black and white from the Middle Ages onwards, it was not until the 20th century that this phenomenon increased enormously.
In the work of the artists in this exhibition, white, black and tones of gray predominate.
of gray predominate. The disappearance of color is part of the core of their practice. There are various motives that have led these artists to abandon color.
Some create in this way a twilight world that connects to reality in a different way. A world in gray tones refers to memories and visions. This world alienates the viewer. Contrary to what we sometimes suspect with the word gray, these works often just hold a great tension. In the 1980s, specifically in Belgium, there was a movement within painting in which color became more obscure, with painters such as Luc Tuymans and Bert De Beul. In their work they evoke associations with politics, power and distorted sexuality.
For others, this omission of color is an investigation into the core of what an image is. They reduce the work of art to its purest
form. They go through a search similar to the early avant-garde artists, but also linking to the spiritual use of black and white images in the Middle Ages. For example, the exterior shutters of altarpieces were often painted in black and white and displayed during Lent. Indeed, the omission of color encouraged meditation and prayer.
Working in black and white is also a way of showing technical mastery. There are very early examples of this too
in painting. For example, we think of the grisaill technique that emerged in the 15th century. These works are a play of illusion or trompe- l’oeil. Even in contemporary art, for example, hyperrealists often work in gray tones. More recently, there are artists who have pushed this even further to extremes. For example, Hans Op de Beeck who has also applied this in sculpture, creating a parallel reality.
Photography is to this day an obvious medium for working in black and white. When color photography made its appearance, photographers stuck to black and white photography.
Consequently, black and white photography often offers a more intense viewing experience.
Recently, among a younger generation of artists, charcoal is a commonly used material. Again, this is an explicit choice by the artist not to use color. She explicitly refers to the fictional nature of what is depicted.
In this exhibition De Warande brings together
a rich selection of contemporary works of art in a palette of black, white and gray that make you experience the power of colorlessness in different ways.

Biënnale van de schilderkunst 2018 – Raveelmuseum

Every two years, the MDD, the Raveel Museum and the Museum of Deinze and the Liestreek collaborate with the Biennial of Painting. In 2018 the focus was on landscape and my triptych “Finistère 1/4/2016 – 20:15” was shown at Raveelmuseum. The work was made for the exhibition El Camino (LAC Narbonne), I made a road trip to Santiago togetherwith my daughter, who was 10 at the time. The first destination of our journey was Finistère in Brittany, the most western point of France. From the cliffs I took a picture of the sunset in three directions, a few days later I did the same in Fisterra in Spain. The two actions resulted in 2 painted altarpieces.

De zindering van de zee – Mesdagcollectie Den Hague

This group exhibition, curated by Joanna De Vos had as its starting point “In search of the miraculous” by Bas Jan Ader. In the rooms of the fantastic Mesdag Collection, work by some twenty contemporary artists was brought into dialogue with each other and with the classic collection. My work “Cancale 1:1” an exact replica in bronze of a piece of Breton rocky coast entered into a dialogue with a Golf by Thierry Decordier

Works on paper – (re)D Gallery Antwerp

I started drawing within my body of work when I was eager to tell something about the depiction of the landscape and the position of the viewer/observer that determines that form. I realized that photography cannot hold a viewer’s gaze while a drawn image does raise certain questions and makes a viewer dwell on an image more attentively and for a longer period of time.
The drawings in this group exhibition are from two series, one where I scan a landscape and transfer the side-by-side spacing between the capture of 2 images, the other is about the scale of the image. For these images I take pictures from a certain distance through a frame, the images are drawn to the same size of the frame and the distance marked by a disk on the ground.

l’extase -Belfius Tower Brussels

I made this work starting from the painting l’ecstasy by Frits Vandenberghe. Vandenberghe portrayed his young daughter in backlight while looking outside during spring. Next to her is a chair with a bouquet of flowers on it. I applied the same pattern, the colors of a spring landscape photographed from our bedroom window were painted on a glass plate the same size as the painting. The composition of Vandenberghe was maintained. On a second glass plate the colors of a bouquet were applied, a depth is created and the colors of the lower surface get a reflection layer.

Vloed / Flood – Ten Bogaerde Koksijde

In this group show, works were collected that had a connection with the sea. Ten Bogaerde is a project space and the Georges Grard museum. The works were not only in dialogue with each other but also with Grard’s sculptures. Curated by Els Wuyts

EL CAMINO – LAC Narbonne

Finistère / Fisterra

For the exhibition El Camino (LAC Narbonne) I made a road trip to Santiago together with my daughter, who was 10 at the time. The first destination of our journey was Finistère in Brittany, the most western point of France. From the cliffs I took a picture of the sunset in three directions, a few days later I did the same in Fisterra in Spain, another “end of the world”.  The two actions resulted in 2 painted altarpieces.

A second work existed in 12 colors capes that referred to 12 stops on our trip. I’ve showed them in a rhythm that was based on the distance between every stop. Each cm of space between the works was 1km of distance.

with: Renato Nicolodi, Ronny Delrue, Jonas Vansteenkiste, Cel Crabeels, Christine Clincx & Stijn Cole

Curated By Christa Vyvey

Onder de loep / Under the magnifying glass – Emile Van Doren museum & C-Mine Genk

Under the magnifying glass was an exhibition in the Emile Van Doren Museum where the work of Stefan Peters, Bert Jacobs and Stijn Cole was brought into dialogue with that of Emile Van Doren and contemporaries. Genk was a centre where both scientists and artists investigated the landscape. The scientists’ gaze was directed downwards, while the artists’ gaze was directed towards the horizon. I made 3 drawings that scan a part of the landscape of the Maten and moved this part to an exhibition room in the museum.

Curated by Kristof Reulens

Façades – Be Part Waregem

2 steps aside:

For this work, I made a journey from Texel (the Netherlands) to Bialowieza (Poland), a journey from a cultural landscape, the Dutch polders recently reclaimed from the sea, to the only remaining piece of primeval forest in Europe. In the middle of that journey (geographically and mentally), I visited a landscape park in Branitz (Germany). In this park, designed by Fürst Pückler Muscau, nature was composed for the first time in function of a visitor on foot. Previously, avenues were created in landscape parks so that people could move from one spectacular view to another by carriage. In Branitz, new views are constantly emerging. I made three pairs of photos in which I took two steps sideways in between the images. I converted these images into three times two drawings that were presented with the same spacing as in which the photos were taken (2 steps).

This photo was taken at Be-Part, the expo room there is round so I brought the left and right sides forward a bit to position both works in a straight line next to each other.

Façades was an expo with Hans Demeulenaere, Wesley Meuris, Honoré d’O & Stijn Cole

Characters makes stories – NICC, Antwerp

This exhibition was linked to a residency at the Frans Masereel Center. A place in Kasterlee where one can practice graphic techniques in various studios. During this period I made a series of etchings in which I copied old Dutch landscape etchings at full size and reprinted them so that the image was mirrored again. A second project was a search for 3 color series that had the same gray tone in black and white reproduction. The work was shown as 3 collages with a black and white reproduction of the three framed works next to them.

cur. Sofie Dederen and Mieke Mels

Sur la route – SMAK Ghent

In 2007, a stage of the Tour de France arrived in Ghent. SMAK asked 20 artists to each ride a stage of the tour and to make an artistic report of it. I drove from Gap to Marseille. Upon arrival, I photographed the setting sun and processed these images into a Timescape. The works were presented all over the city in 20 supporters’ cafes. On various TV screens in the café, the broadcast of the Tour de France was alternated with landscape photos that were provided with GPS coordinates. That day, Gert Steegmans defeated his own captain Tom Bonen in the sprint on the Charles Dekerckhovenlaan.

Kunst & Zwalm 2007

For the first time I added the colors of the land to my Timescapes.

For six months, I went to photograph a landscape in Zwalm at regular intervals, each time during 2,5 hours. In the beginning a fallow field and in the summer a fully grown corn field. The colours on the tinescapes presented evolved from brown to fresh green, influenced by the light intensity of the moment and the colours of the sky.

Betoverd Bos / Artificial landscape – Aalter

For the group show enchanted forest I chalked a number of trees at the edge of the forest white from eye level to the crown. From a distance, the edge of the forest seemed about 20 metres closer.

Curated by Angelique Campens