THOUGHTFULLY CURATED ART IS INHERENTLY PART OF
OUR UNIVERSE AND AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT IN CREATING
A TIMELESS AND HOMEY ATMOSPHERE.
Photo Marijke Jans
MARIJKE JANS - OPEN HOUSE AW 2024
Marijke Jans is a storytelling object designer and a biobased material developer. At the core of her creative philosophy lies a deep respect for the materials she develops & works with.
For Marijke, the material doesn’t just influence the design; it drives it, dictating both aesthetics and form. This is not a process of control, but of collaboration, where the unpredictable nature of living materials shapes each piece in unexpected ways.
Her designs are born from a 100% hand-made process, using organic waste streams to craft sustainable and unique creations. Each object is the result of an intimate dialogue between matter and maker— a constant evolution of experimentation that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible. No two objects are alike, as each one is a one-of-a-kind expression of both nature’s raw potential and Marijke’s vision.
Through her work, Marijke materializes stories — tangible expressions of emotion and beauty that evoke a deep connection between the object and its viewer. Each piece is a living testament to the harmony between craft, nature, and design.
REMAINS - OPEN HOUSE AW 2024
Gert Van Dessel
Gert is a visual artist and creator of lighting and furniture objects. His mixed media is layered and monochrome, his lighting objects intimate and poetic, his furniture objects raw yet polished. Gert ignores the classical thinking about materials and techniques. He combines old and new, with a special focus on resin and texture.
He explores connections between material and form, through a process that relies on traditional craftsmanship.
Each work emanates from a dialogue between past and present, nature and culture, function and aesthetic. From this dialogue, tranquil and timeless creations arise.
Sonja Geens
Sonja is a visual artist and mentor of an art studio for children. She makes calm acrylic paintings and works overcross with beeswax, tree resin, natural rubber, clay, old papers and textiles. She is fascinated by the person behind the facade and by the beauty of what is small, lived and human. Her work focuses on the dualities of vulnerability and strength, loneliness and connection. Sonja creates from a desire to preserve and protect, to connect and soften. Her work is a silent witness of an uncertain reality, an unfinished past and a profound humanity. That allows the viewer to feel the inner.
ELS BIJNENS - KUNSTENNACHT & OPEN HOUSE SS 2024
Els Bijnens (1963) lives and works in the enchanted nature of Zutendaal (BE). She holds a degree in Interior Design and worked on several projects in Belgium and abroad.
For years she worked with different materials in collaboration with local craftsmen and therefore refined her techniques and ideas in applying textures, colors and raw materials. This sensitivity gradually shifted her activities from functional assignments to contemporary arts.
Bijnens' artworks (sculptures, assemblages, collages, sewed works and drawings) are characterized by their inherent tactility and fueled both materially as conceptually by a constant, yet intuitive process of collecting, rearranging and narrating.
NIKI ROBETTE - MARCH-APRIL 2024
Niki Robette works in painting and sculpture.
Her favorite material is plaster.
Her white polyhedrons reveal architectural and evolutionary codes developed during her studies in architecture.
The composition draws inspiration from Cubism and dynamic fragmentation. The elements are cut out and then reassembled. They can be viewed individually, combined, stacked, or overlapped, offering countless perspectives depending on the positions or shapes of the compositions.
The research aims to create tension around a main line that rises through the space or merges with the surface.
The forms stretch, within a single block, vertically or horizontally—a balance between equilibrium and imbalance.
They are conceived as mutants, in constant metamorphosis.
These presences respond to one another, where forces oppose each other.
The artist explores Constructivism in its abstraction by introducing “the house within the house,” a space within a space.
The white light plays its part, illuminating the various facets of the monolith, emphasizing edges or curves, acting as a matte mirror that both dulls and reflects the human aspiration to inhabit the Earth.
REMAINS - KUNSTENNACHT & OPEN HOUSE SS 2023
Gert Van Dessel
Gert is a visual artist and creator of lighting and furniture objects. His mixed media is layered and monochrome, his lighting objects intimate and poetic, his furniture objects raw yet polished. Gert ignores the classical thinking about materials and techniques. He combines old and new, with a special focus on resin and texture.
He explores connections between material and form, through a process that relies on traditional craftsmanship.
Each work emanates from a dialogue between past and present, nature and culture, function and aesthetic. From this dialogue, tranquil and timeless creations arise.
Sonja Geens
Sonja is a visual artist and mentor of an art studio for children. She makes calm acrylic paintings and works overcross with beeswax, tree resin, natural rubber, clay, old papers and textiles. She is fascinated by the person behind the facade and by the beauty of what is small, lived and human. Her work focuses on the dualities of vulnerability and strength, loneliness and connection. Sonja creates from a desire to preserve and protect, to connect and soften. Her work is a silent witness of an uncertain reality, an unfinished past and a profound humanity. That allows the viewer to feel the inner.
MARINE GOBLET - SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 2022
Faire un choix s’était faire une croix sur une chose au détriment d’une autre, alors que ce sont toutes ces vies qui créent mon identité.
Diplômée de l’Institut des Carrières Artistique de Paris, depuis mes 17 ans j’ai toujours créé en parallèle de mes études et de mes différentes activités professionnelles, avec des hauts et des bas mais considérant ces moments comme une expérience méditative et d’introspection.
J’explore, je doute et reprends goût à manipuler la matière.
Le processus créatif est pour moi une forme de méditation.
J’utilise le collage de papiers anciens, la peinture, les pigments et depuis peu j’incorpore le fil brodé dans mon travail.
J’explore les incertitudes et les imperfections, le geste et le contact avec la matière sont des besoins essentiels dans mon travail.
BIRGIT STULENS - KUNSTENNACHT 2021
Birgit studied Photography at the SASK Academy of Fine Arts Hasselt until 2001, and followed a summer workshop with Erwin Olaf at Flacc in 2001, and got her Specialisation Degree in 2009 with honorable mention.
In her photography, she is looking out for the unremarkable, the pattern, the recurrent. It’s the interest for contrast and dualism that shapes her work. A subject evolves into abstraction, as if the image becomes a painting, and the silence is found.
Concepts of time, repetition, freezing a moment, subtle differences in light and shadow attract her attention. The awareness of being close to nature and of our limited time in this world has turned her eye to vulnerable and futile themes.
DRAGANA - FEBRUARY-MARCH 2020
Dragana Radojevic, geboren in Servië op 8/11/1958, volgde de liefde naar België in 1987.
Tekenen, schilderen en kunst boeiden haar al sinds haar tienerjaren. In het kunstonderwijs leerde ze een brede waaier aan technieken, waaronder zeefdruk, lithografie, polimeer en ets.
Momenteel volgt ze grafiekkunst aan de Stedelijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten te Hasselt.
Huidige tentoonstelling brengt een reeks van etsen met Rembrandt als inspiratiebron.
MYRIAM EYGEMANS - NOVEMBER 2019 -JANUARY 2020
Myriam leeft, schrijft en schildert op golven van weemoed en melancholie die haar evenzeer begeleiden op hoogdagen als in moeilijke tijden.
Ze houdt van de natuur, de grote en de kleine elementen die haar vaak met verbijstering omhelzen, ontzag en bewondering afdwingen.
Het raadsel van dit leven, de op- en neerwaartse gang van mensen: het fascineert en intrigeert haar.
Dat alles giet ze in vormen en woorden, groot en klein, sober of gekruld, in zwart/ wit of weerbarstig rood.
Soms is er troost maar ook een rationele kern is nooit ver weg.
Zoals grasland dat zwijgt onder de mist. Je ziet het niet maar het is er wel.
Het handgeschept papier leent zich perfect om de trage woorden een thuis te geven.
Even verwijderd van een oplichtend scherm, geduldig gedeeld met de lezer en zijn natuur.
CECILIA LEVY - MARCH-MAY 2019
Cecilia Levy creates sculptural objects in paper, using old book pages, wheat starch paste and papier maché technique.
Her work is exhibited internationally and is included in private and permanent collections, including the Swedish National museum.
Most recently, in 2017, her public art commission was installed in the main entrance of Stockholms New Karolinska University Hospital, NKS, twenty plinths holding over 25 unique paper sculptures.
She lives in Sigtuna, works in her studio at Ateljéföreningen Hospitalet in Uppsala and is a member of Konsthantverkarna in Stockholm, where her work is sold.
ROOSJE & POLLIE - NOVEMBER 2018 -FEBRUARY 2019
ROOSJE
De keramische objecten van roosje chini dragen
letterlijk en figuurlijk de sporen van haar schilderijen en haar grafiek.
Een sterke erfenis.
Ze bouwt haar gelaagde, sculpturale composities op uit kleiplaten,
die tijdens het bewerkingsproces getekend worden door toevallige texturen,
aangevuld met gestuurde schrifturen, tekens, krassen, symbolen.
Krijgen deze “beelden” op het eerste gezicht vaak de uiterlijke vorm van hedendaagse gebruikskeramiek mee, dan breekt ze die vormelijke gelijkenis ook weer meteen: insnijdingen en inkervingen kwetsen en doorboren de vorm,
maken hem ‘onbruikbaar’.
Deze ingrepen zorgen, samen met de keuze voor sobere, aardse variaties in kleikleur en engobe, voor een sterke archetypische uitstraling:
het zijn grafvondsten, archeologische relicten, die uitnodigen tot stille contemplatie.
Dit sacrale gevoel wordt niet zelden nog versterkt door de opstelling:
installaties met vijf, zeven, honderd keramische voorwerpen of meer palmen zwijgend,
maar onmiskenbaar hun plaats in.
POLLIE
Pollie Gregoor verdiende, mede door zijn jarenlange engagement als docent schilderkunst in het kunstonderwijs, zijn sporen vooral als schilder van een schijnbaar steeds abstracter wordend werk, waarin een vérgaande versobering van het kleurpalet ten dienste staat van reeksen met contemplatief, haast sacraal werk. In zijn uit “gesprokkeld schroot” opgebouwde sculpturen kiest hij voor een figuratievere, vertellende vormtaal, hoewel de onderliggende gedachte er een blijft van afwachtende bezinning.