The three artists in the exhibition "Uitblinkend door verzuim" (2) – Jean-Marie Bytebier, Eric Colpaert and Lukas Vandenabeele – have little in common at first glance. Their oeuvres appear very different. Nevertheless, in "Emergent" they have been brought together based on one common characteristic. In their work, they are driven by the desire to liberate or redeem themselves from all involvements, judgments, meanings, and presences. At the same time, they realize (using words or images to pursue their goal) that the fulfillment of this desire is impossible. The work presented exists in, with, and thanks to that paradox.

Jean-Marie Bytebier’s works are often immediately interpreted as landscapes. And yet, time and again, the artist does his utmost to remove as much landscape as possible. After all, he wants to break the canon of landscape painting by introducing obstacles into his work. The impetus for Bytebier's contribution to "Uitblinkend door verzuim" (2) was the artist's book AB.ad, a collaboration between the artist, Luc Derycke, and MER. Paper Kunsthalle.

Every work by Eric Colpaert places you—at times very directly and manifestly, at other times cautiously and subtly—in the field of tension between here and there, between things or motifs that seem very familiar and the totally different or unimaginable. Through the always sensitive, seductive aesthetic of his work, the artist invites us to explore that in-between world. The oeuvre of Lukas Vandenabeele focuses on the crisis of looking, and thus of meaning. It requires the image, but wants to make seeing collapse. It creates letters and words, with no other goal than to attack the word. It wants to sever the connection, the incestuous relationship between brain and world.

Curator: Frank Maes