Jan Van Imschoot

For some years now, Jan Van Imschoot's name has almost inevitably come up when talking about young, good Belgian painters. However, he himself prefers the authenticity of a drawing to the painting. This exhibition at Be-Part is the first presentation of Jan Van Imschoot that focuses exclusively on his drawing oeuvre.

Both his drawings and canvases should be viewed in an almost literary manner, where often literally the word becomes image and, conversely, the image can tell a complete story.

His works are characterised by a certain rough appearance that suggests the work is unfinished. Precisely because of this, Van Imschoot manages to reinforce the ambiguity and mystery of images so that, as a viewer, you do sense that he is not concerned with producing only legible, figurative works but rather with searching for ‘the right image’. In his work, this image consists more and more of different canvases, which in ever-changing combinations always form a whole without losing their autonomy as ‘paintings’.

For Be-Part, Jan Van Imschoot's realisations include a new installation: Monument for raped, roped and ripped off women. This installation is a collage of several series of drawings that refer to each other and are presented on the back wall of the central space. The drawings only acquire their full layeredness and meaning when they can be seen and ‘read’ together. There will also be a number of series of drawings that will be presented in Be-Part's other spaces. These are mainly recent works that have never been seen before and series that will only now, for this exhibition, be shown in their entirety for the first time.