{"id":34228,"date":"2026-08-25T05:33:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T05:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/34228\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T05:33:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T05:33:26","slug":"hans-op-de-beeck-new-show-in-brussels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/34228\/","title":{"rendered":"Hans Op de Beeck New Show in Brussels"},"content":{"rendered":"

This fall, Hans Op de Beeck returns to Brussels with an exhibition<\/a> that seems to ask for something increasingly difficult to find: time. Opening September 10 at Almine Rech<\/a> Brussels, \u201cVanishing Point<\/a>\u201d brings together new sculptures and an animated film in the artist\u2019s first exhibition with the gallery\u2014and his first solo presentation<\/a> in Brussels in more than 15 years. On view through November 7, the exhibition arrives following the success of \u201cNocturnal Journey,\u201d presented at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2025, extending the Belgian artist\u2019s long-running exploration of memory, imagination, stillness, and the strange emotional charge of ordinary things.<\/p>\n

A Horizon Between the Visible and the Unknown<\/p>\n

\"Hans
\n Portrait of Hans Op de Beeck, 2025 \/ \u00a9 Hans Op de Beeck \u2013 Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech \u2013 Photo: Hugard & Vanoverschelde.<\/p>\n

\"Hans
\n Hans Op de Beeck, \u201cPond (Roe Deer),\u201d 2026, mixed Media 50 x 200 x 200 cm, (c) Hans Op de Beeck, photo by Hugard & Vanoverschelde, courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech.<\/p>\n

The exhibition takes its title from the vanishing point of classical perspective: the place on the horizon where parallel lines appear to converge and three-dimensional space begins to slip from view. For Op de Beeck, however, the concept is also an existential one. \u201cVanishing Point\u201d imagines a threshold between what can be measured and understood and what remains elusive\u2014a movement from the concrete toward the abstract, the mental, and perhaps even the spiritual.<\/p>\n

That sense of transition has long animated Op de Beeck<\/a>\u2019s multidisciplinary practice. Working across sculpture, installation, film, drawing, photography, and watercolor, the artist constructs highly detailed environments that feel at once familiar and slightly displaced. A room, landscape, table, carousel, or solitary figure can appear almost perfectly recognizable, only to become uncanny through staging, monochrome surfaces, or subtle shifts in scale and context.<\/p>\n

For \u201cVanishing Point,\u201d visitors will enter an immersive environment populated by furniture, sculptures, and decorative objects, with the atmosphere of a Wunderkammer\u2014or cabinet of curiosities\u2014somewhere between an old natural history museum and a private world of accumulated memories. The exhibition<\/a> brings together culture and nature in an eclectic, anachronistic arrangement, encouraging visitors to move through a space where no single narrative fully resolves.<\/p>\n

Hans Op de Beeck Suspends Figures in Time<\/p>\n

\"Hans
\n Hans Op de Beeck, \u201cAutumn Pond,\u201d 2025, mixed media, 115 x 115 x 13.5 cm, (c) Hans Op de Beeck, photo by Hugard & Vanoverschelde, courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech.<\/p>\n

\"Hans
\n Hans Op de Beeck, \u201cOrrery (Loss),\u201d 2025, mixed media, 232 x 130 x 130 cm, (c) Hans Op de Beeck, photo by Hugard & Vanoverschelde, courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech.<\/p>\n

Among the new works are contemplative human figures that embody the exhibition\u2019s interest in interiority and suspension. C\u00e9cile, a life-sized sculpture from 2026, depicts a young woman seated on a chaise longue, apparently absorbed in thought. Nearby, a small deer rests on the furniture, while a framed Seascape hangs on the wall. A handbag placed on the floor adds another detail from everyday life, yet the entire scene is rendered in Op de Beeck\u2019s distinctive monochromatic palette, transforming a domestic moment into something dreamlike and almost theatrical.<\/p>\n

The exhibition will also include a meditating teenage boy and a toddler caught in a melancholy moment, extending the artist\u2019s fascination with figures who seem to exist outside ordinary action. Rather than offering dramatic events, these works linger in pauses: moments when nothing appears to be happening and yet something emotionally charged remains just beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

Other works on view include Small Blue Still Life (1), Tangerines, Autumn Pond, and Pond (Roe Deer), demonstrating the breadth of Op de Beeck\u2019s attention\u2014from intimate still-life arrangements to expansive natural scenes. Orrery (Loss), meanwhile, points toward the artist\u2019s recurring interest in larger systems of time, movement, and disappearance.<\/p>\n

Color\u2014or rather, its removal\u2014remains central to this visual world. Op de Beeck frequently renders sculptures and installations in shades of grey, anthracite, and chalk white, withdrawing familiar objects from immediate reality and placing them somewhere between memory and imagination. The effect can make even the most ordinary scene feel spectral, as though it belongs simultaneously to the past, the future, and an imagined present.<\/p>\n

Why \u201cVanishing Point\u201d Matters Now<\/p>\n

\"Hans
\n Hans Op de Beeck, \u201cSmall Blue Still Life (1), 2026, mixed media, 41 x 52 x 21 cm, (c) Hans Op de Beeck, photo by Hugard & Vanoverschelde, courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech.<\/p>\n

\"Hans
\n Hans Op de Beeck, \u201cTangerines, 2026, polyester, wood and coating, 28 x 35 x 5 cm, (c) Hans Op de Beeck, photo by Hugard & Vanoverschelde, courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech.<\/p>\n

At a moment defined by speed, constant images, and increasingly fragmented attention, Op de Beeck\u2019s work proposes another mode of looking. His installations do not reveal themselves all at once. They encourage the viewer to linger, notice small details, and remain within uncertainty rather than immediately searching for an explanation.<\/p>\n

This resistance to instant consumption gives \u201cVanishing Point\u201d particular resonance now. The exhibition\u2019s animated film, also titled Vanishing Point, develops this interest through a slow, almost hypnotic sequence in which spaces appear and disappear, objects shift, and settings gradually transform. Time itself seems to move toward a horizon that can never quite be reached.<\/p>\n

Op de Beeck has built an international career around these suspended worlds, with recent solo exhibitions at KMSKA in Antwerp, Powerlong Museum in Shanghai, the Nordic Watercolour Museum in Sk\u00e4rhamn, Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort, and Amos Rex in Helsinki. His works are also held in collections including MuHKA, S.M.A.K., the Kr\u00f6ller-M\u00fcller Museum, Albertina, and the Mus\u00e9es Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.<\/p>\n

Yet there is something especially meaningful about this return to Brussels. More than 15 years after his last solo exhibition in the city, Op de Beeck arrives with a body of work concerned precisely with what changes, fades, and remains. \u201cVanishing Point\u201d does not offer disappearance as an ending. Instead, it imagines the horizon as a place of projection\u2014where memory, desire, and imagination continue to gather, even as the world in front of us begins to dissolve.<\/p>\n

\"Hans
\n Hans Op de Beeck, \u201cC\u00eacile,\u201d 2026, mixed media, \u201cSeascape,\u201d 2022, polyester, metal, and coating, (c) Hans Op de Beeck, photo by Hans Op de Beeck Studio, courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This fall, Hans Op de Beeck returns to Brussels with an exhibition that seems to ask for something…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[9038,18,311,18510],"class_list":["post-34228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-almine-rech","tag-brussels","tag-exhibitions","tag-hans-op-de-beeck"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/117154519634465499","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}