Jan Van Imschoot - The End Is Never Near

'And that world, as the title of the expo suggests, is far from ending.' 

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'The End Is Never Near' is the first retrospective exhibition devoted to the work of the Belgian artist Jan Van Imschoot. Van Imschoot is internationally known for his intimate, enigmatic works from the early 1990s and his recent large-scale, historically inspired tableaus. The exhibition charts a rough chronological trajectory that spans more than thirty years through more than eighty canvases by his hand.Van Imschoot belongs to a generation of artists who, in the course of the 1990s, laid the foundations for the critical revaluation of figurative painting. His work occupies a unique place among his peers and contemporaries because of the profound art-historical awareness from which he paints. He looks at contemporary subjects such as gender, identity, war and peace from sources of inspiration such as the Dutch 17th century, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and especially Edouard Manet, the archetypal peintre de la vie moderne .

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In addition to the classical history of Western painting, film and literature also serve as important pillars in Van Imschoot's creative universe. By also paying attention to this, the exhibition aims to bring the world of Jan Van Imschoot to life within the walls of SMAK

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Curator: Dieter Roelstraete