La Vérité en peinture

The Kusseneers Gallery operated for years in Antwerp’s Zuid district, but decided – like Galerie van der Mieden, NICC, and Office Baroque – a while ago to try its luck in Brussels. It is now based in a beautifully restored mustard factory in Molenbeek. For its opening, the curator Hans Martens was asked to put together an exhibition on the theme of painting. The show takes its title, “La vérité en peinture” from a letter by Paul Cézanne. Martens selected eight painters, who, in their own distinctive ways, have tackled a medium that has been repeatedly declared dead but always strikes back. Ermias Kifleyesus tackles it in the most original way, literally transferring plastic bags he found in the street to canvas. The result is a four-part polyptych in which you can see prints of carrier bags from, among others, Zeeman and Lidl. Marilou Van Lierop, for her part, takes as her starting point old Polaroid shots, which she incorporates into her canvas and complements in paint. Not uninteresting, but it is the abstract paintings that, for the most part, steal the show. Such as the monochrome-style works of Jus Juchtmans, which are covered with a coating of resin that gives his paintings a transcendental atmosphere. Ben Benaouisse completely paints over earlier works, in either black or white, creating an interplay of revealing and concealing, matt and shiny. Oscar van der Put also goes in for overpainting, but does so in a muted colour palette of white, beige, and grey that at times recalls the great Raoul De Keyser. His works are fragile and delicate – and are, for us, the revelation of this exhibition, which illustrates the well-nigh infinite possibilities of the medium. A centuries-old tradition may sometimes be experienced as a burden by the current generation of painters; here, however, at least in most cases, it has anything but a paralysing effect.

LA VERITE EN PEINTURE > 8/3, do/je/Th > za/sa/Sa 14 > 18.00, KUSSENEERS GALLERY, Menenstraat 10 rue de Menin, Molenbeek, 0475-65.11.09, www.kusseneers.com