Wim Wauman plays and experiments with photography, language, materials, objects and narration. He is known for his quirky compositions featuring ‘inspirational objects’ photographed in elaborate wooden settings. Around 2015, he started to compose figurative and abstract work with fine wood veneer and gradually formed an exclusive collection of personalized tables, cabinets, stools, and distinct props functioning as ‘infrastructural’ or ‘conversation’ pieces (including vintage blankets and found artefacts).

In December 2019 Wauman obtained a ‘PhD in the arts’ degree at the University of Antwerp (ARIA) with a poetic and artistic exploration on notions of craftsmanship, making and thinking. His conclusion involved the temporary transformation of a ‘neglected provincial castle’ into a semi-pastoral research centre designed to collaborate with fellow artists and to induce an artistic state of flow (Blauwhaus, Waasmunster, 2019). There he gained interest in re-imagining local histories and singularities to ‘enchant’ and ‘heal’ his surroundings through a strategic combination of visual (and experiential) stimuli, multidisciplinary interventions, discursive gatherings, and public events ‘powered by #AirCrafts’: an imaginative '(witch)craft' involving ritual, seduction, fabulation, narration and wordplay.

Nowadays Wauman amusingly combines aspects of conceptual and visual arts with marquetry techniques, decorative and illustrative design, scenography, visionary writing, and storytelling. He regularly publishes booklets on his research, idiosyncratic fabulations and artistic ‘Blauwhaus’ collaborations. His work has been acquired by museums such as FotoMuseum (Antwerp) and Victoria and Albert Museum (London) or by the Flemish Community (M HKA, Antwerp).

Jolijn Baeckelandt (Ostend,1993) is a contemporary painter who lives and works in Antwerp.

In her paintings Baeckelandt’s tries to point out the duality between the expected and the unexpected, chaos and order, and other. The complex relations and the movement between these. A perpetual game of ping pong where each element relies on the other's presence. Her paintings are the results of the space and time between these contradictions where she tries to react on and capture this moment.

According to her; contradictions through thinking and contemplating is essential to a human being.

It arises not only in thought but also in the process of creation.

These contradictions provide conflict, tension and friction. This tension field creates an openness and through these we gain motion. Always open to the next paradox.

“ The imposed one-sided thinking and behavior blocks the (mind from) ejaculation”.

Baeckelandt often employs everyday, recognizable materials (and symbols) as a foundation. materials that provoke tension between them and the paint.- a continuous push and pull.

With her work, she doesn't aim to provide answers or draw conclusions. Instead, she consistently ends with a question mark, keeping the process in motion. Constantly encountering new confrontations in form and content.

Simon Masschelein’s sculptural thinking starts from the joint. He fabricates hinged sculptures. How did he come to this? At a time, he was surrounded by pieces of wood, never longer than one and a half meter, nicely shaped, and this was a starting point to envision higher sculptures, resembling ramshackle stacked totem poles. So he started looking for ways to connect these elements, initially similar to ways protheses are connected to the body, then morphing them into hinges. One sculpture has been conceptualized from a knee, another from the way a femur fits the pelvis. One sculpture, made out of forty kilos of sculpted alabaster, is held upright by a tensioned cable self-riveted to an iron ball which is clamped in a bracket. A strange, two-piece figure on two wobbly feet giving shape to a modest contrapposto, sometimes folds forward. A tree trunk is chiseled into a spiral column, then hollowed out, halved and reconnected by a wooden link. For me, the beauty of Masschelein’s art is the way he adapts wood, stone and metal and combines these elements into new shapes. No assemblages, no old stuff, but powerful new work with a hardly hidden tenderness. ( text Hans Theys)

Fran is a sculptor who graduated from the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts in 2020.

She grew up in the agricultural world, surrounded by ancestral objects that-her grandfather and father- and later she collected, forklifts and various agricultural machines that she handles with grace, ease and lightness.

Her studio is located on her family's -retired-farm in -the west Flanders-, a large estate with meadows, fields, a pond, -trees, animals- and stables. Welcome to Ludwigshaven, the place where Fran, harvests her own living world.

Fran Van Coppenolle creates sculptures based on shapes and objects that she observes. She welds metal, carves wood, welds, bends and creates surprising volumes with found pieces of textile. Her sculptures evoke flowers, butterflies, birds and flying machines, not by intention, but as a result of a work of duplication to arrive at sculptural forms.

At the same time, she seeks subtle asymmetries that seem to bring these delicate sculptural apparitions to life. Fran's works take on an extra dimension because they are figurative and unrecognizable. They allow for a multitude of possible interpretations. Surprisingly fresh materials are put under tension, tightened, braided, harnessed, tied together until they begin to form intangible, incomprehensible and captivating objects.

Beautiful creations that throw breathing spaces into the world without asking anyone's permission.

(text Sabrina Brachot)

Kim Wey is based in Antwerp. Her work mainly focuses on its satirical response to the questionable art market. With the alter ego 'Kim Wey' as her main subject, her art practice mainly focuses on installations and in-situ work to point out the distinctions between what is perceived as 'celebrated' and 'thriving' art versus the position of the unfruitful and unavailing arts-practitioner and thereby experimenting with the boundary between self promotion and self indulgence.

2023 Vogels, group exhibition, Pizza Gallery Antwerp.

2022 A kiss is an imprint, group exhibition, D.E.K.A.M.E.R.E.D Antwerp

2022 It’s not about me, it’s about ART, solo exhibition, Ensemble vzw Gent

2022 1+1+1+1+1=>5, group exhibition, Desserts Gallerie Hasselt

2022 Vitrine #2, duo exhibition, Veduta Brussels

2021 Een goddelijke interventie, duo exhibition, Factor 44 Antwerp

Born in 1956 in Sint-Truiden Michel lives and works between Brussels and Paris. François’s interest lies in exploring a variety of media including installation, video, sculpture and photography, often combined and linked to create a larger idea. Through these various techniques and materials, François comments on the relationships and contradictions that we face in our public and private lives. Some are more formal such as convex versus concave forms, the connection between the external and the internal, light versus dark. Others focus on political “truths” versus deception and/or manipulation. Central to the artist’s work is the reconsideration of simple known images, objects or banal iconography.

2023 Contre Nature, Solo exhibition Bozar Brussels, Belgium

2022 Under a Cloud, Group exhibition Prinsenbos Grimbergen , Belgium

2022 Panopticon , Group exhibition Yarat Contemporary Art Center Baku, Azerbaijan

2022 Résister encore, group exhibition Musée cantonal Beaux-Arts Lausanne, Switzerland

2021 Jours Blancs, Group exhibition Gallery Kamel Mennour, Paris, France

Hantrax is the alias of Antwerp based composer, performer, and pianist Han Swolfs (1984). Renowned for his live electronic performances and imaginative piano stage productions, his shows are kinetic, atmospheric, hypnotic, and cinematic. A multi-faceted musician who is both enigmatic and kind. Hantrax traverses music categories with whimsical ease from classical to jazz to experimental electronic music.

As a composer, his music in spirit is experimental, taking seemingly incompatible influences and mixing them into his self-invented musical language. He breaks the rules of genres, cross-pollinating styles at will into his oeuvre of dark ‘undanceable’ dance music. His ingeniously crafted compositions reimagine standard forms. Old and new technology is an integral part of his process, exploring the possibilities of analogue and digital systems, music machines and recording systems. Dubbed the illustrious prince of the Antwerp underground, Hantrax creates transformative music championed by connoisseurs and barbarians alike.

His collection, which includes his piano compositions and his electronic work, is available on Palermo Records, Ekster label, Roulette Records, Jack playmobil, and Jheri tracks. Off stage, Hantrax can be found hosting a modernist music program called Klankmeanders with his father, Hendrik Van Geel, on Radio Central and can be heard on his radio show titled Headroom on the Word Radio, that exposes innovative music of all categories.

Working at the intersection of the arts, Hantrax has been involved in numerous creative collaborations and productions. Highlights include work with visual artists Anne-mie van Kerckhoven, Pieterjan Ginckels and Arocha – Schraenen, as well as performances for the theater company Abattoir Fermé and for the classical orchestra of Michiel De Malsche as a soloist.

Jordi Colomer was born in Barcelona, Spain . He currently lives and works between Barcelona and Paris. His work, marked by a strong sculptural sense, encompasses multiple disciplines, especially photography and video, and their staging in the exhibition space. Often, the creation of situations of a kind of "expanded theater" allows the viewer to evaluate his relationship with the representations and with the role he plays in and in front of them. The most recent works present the multiple facets of utopia, dystopia, and their relationship with fiction. Join Us, the project for the Spanish Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, was a reclamation of nomadism as a collective movement and privileged material applied to urban utopias.

Véronique Bourgoin was born in Marseille and lives and works in Montreuil, France.

She graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1991.Véronique’s practice is built on a series of experiments with the photographic medium before extending into a multiplicity of media such as publishing, drawing, painting, ceramics, video and installation. The experimental character of her practice unfolds as much through the manipulation of physical, chemical and psychic elements, highlighting the transformational effects of vision and imagination and in particular the spectacular effects in counter-spectacular contexts where intimacy and simulacra become entangled. Inspired as much by her daily life as by political, technological or historical contingencies, Véronique Bourgoin examines the construction of "contemporary paradises" deployed from a weft of recurring questionings on materiality, the body, the living, identity and its modes of representation in the face of the conflicts of our time. Collaborative experiences are intrinsic to his artistic approach and his relationship to the world.

From the end of the 80s, she initiated with Juli Susin a collaborative project around the creation of artists' books. The history of these activities, gathered under the name "Royal Book Lodge", is the subject of a book by historian John C. Welchman, published by Hatje Cantz in March 2023. In 1995, she co-founded with J. Susin, the Atelier Reflexe, an experimental school of photography. In 2005, she created a group of performers, The Hole Garden, a collective identity at the origin of performative actions, films and photographic series.

Bourgoin participated in numerous exhibitions in international institutions and festivals such as Fotohof, Salzburg; Performa, New Museum, New-York; Photo Festival Landskrona, Sweden ; Fotomuseum, Rotterdam; Tütün Deposu Ek bina, Istanbul; Caochangdi Photospring Festival, China; LA Art Center, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, Saint Paulo, Brazil; El Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City; Maison d'Arts Bernard Anthonioz, Paris; Thessaloniki Photography Biennial, Greece; Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba Biennal, Brazil.

In 1981 Juli Susin (born 1966) left the Soviet Union with his family to settle in Berlin, then the contingencies of the stateless situation brought him to France where he graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1991.

From the 1980s onwards, he developed with friends an international network of collaborations around the Artist's book, more recently known as the Royal Book Lodge. The history of these collaborative activities, initiated with the French artist Véronique Bourgoin, is written by the historian John C. Welchman, and published under the name "Royal Book Lodge", by Hatje Cantz, in March 2023.

Since 2005, he has been working in Albisola (Italy), in the ceramic workshop founded by Ivos Pacetti. Ceramic works made in recent years have been inspired by the artist's numerous stays in Paraguay.

Some of the works were presented in 2013, in the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, as part of the Curitiba Biennial, Brazil.

Liv Bugge studied at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Belgium. She completed her PhD, "The Other Wild: Touching Art as Confrontation", at Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2019. Bugge’s research explores how mechanisms in society are internalized and contribute to the maintaining of normative notions and ethics around, for example, such dichotomies as life and non-life or human and nature. Liv has a practice informed by queer and feminist perspectives and was during the period 2012-2020 running the platform FRANK together with artist Sille Storihle.

Bugge has had solo presentations at, among other places: Marabouparken Konsthall in Stockholm, Kunstnernes Hus and Intercultural Museum in Oslo, and Sørlandets Kunstmuseum in Kristiansand. She presented her work at the Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art.

She was part of the Venice Biennale 2022 'The Milk of Dreams' commissioned by Cecilia Alemani invited to participate with her work ‘Play’

Jack Davey Lives and works in London

Working primarily as a sculptor engaged with textiles, Davey has explored digital media. sound and collage as part of his larger installations.

Through his work, Jack attempts to capture energies and emotions within a solid structure and asks how one might imbue those qualities into an inanimate object.

This is investigated through material experimentation, theoretical research and themes such as sexual frustration and desire, anger, behaviour, human anatomy, the subconscious, memory and hidden messages. Fundamentally, Jack aims to dissect, analyse and re-build these elements to create a new sculptural language. A consciousness held within an object.

During a month-long residency in Ticino, Switzerland (May 2022), Jack developed a body of work made entirely out of parcel paper. Culminating in two full-sized, interactive installations entitled Dirty Room. The installations were supplemented by drawings, painted collage and video.

Expanding on this, Jack recently celebrated the opening of his latest solo exhibition In Bulge at Casstl Antwerp, Belgium (November - December 2022). An exhibition refining the concepts, materiality and questions of impermanence examined during this period. This was fused with Jack’s endeavour to freeze energy and imbue objects with immoveable certainty and consciousness.

Tamara Beheydt is an art historian and a freelance art-writer. She is part of the core group of editors of H ART Magazine, and frequently publishes contributions for other written media such as Openbaar Kunstbezit Vlaanderen and De Tijd. She writes exhibition texts or portfolio texts for artists, and occasionally performs as a public speaker during panel conversations, lectures, or artist talks. From an interest for and belief in the value of contemporary art for the human community, she commits to providing a supporting platform to artistic discourses and to maintaining a critical overview of developments in the cultural field. (photo by Charlotte Van Noten)