Sybren Vanoverberghe
Promised Colours
Waregem
In his work, Sybren Vanoverberghe (b. 1996, Kortrijk) explores how photography influences our view of history, nature and heritage. He combines photography with a variety of printing techniques, installations, constructions and found objects. His images depict landscapes, architecture and relics that seem to be in a constant state of flux between the past and the future. At times they seem to originate from an era that once existed; at others, from a future yet to come. This gives rise to images that feel both familiar and strange, as if they bear witness to a history we remember, but which may never have taken place.
Be-Part Waregem
Gemeenteplein 12
8790 Waregem
Thursday: 14:00–17:30
Friday: 14:00–17:30
Saterday: 14:00–17:30
Sunday : 11:00–17:30
Pay what you can
For his exhibition at Be-Part, Vanoverberghe brings together two series: Cabinets (2026) and Grey Card Gray (2024–2026). Although they appear very different at first glance, both explore how photography captures, alters and sometimes even conceals reality.
In the Cabinets series, Vanoverberghe takes as his starting point a research trip to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. There, he photographed various artefacts from ancient Egypt, including grave goods, funerary objects, cat figurines and sarcophagi. These are objects that once played a significant role in rituals and beliefs about death, but are now kept behind glass in museum display cases. Some photographs show little more than an empty display case or a thin layer of dust.
In Grey Card Gray, the focus shifts to colour. The series brings together photographs that Vanoverberghe took whilst travelling through Egypt and Jordan and at sites from the Soviet era in Bulgaria. By cropping the images and heavily saturating the colours, he alienates the photographed places from their recognisable reality. The colours sometimes appear unnatural, making it harder to determine exactly what we are seeing. Photography no longer merely records the world, but also transforms it.
With Promised Colours, Vanoverberghe brings together two ways of looking: the understated, almost archaeological approach of Cabinets and the bold, sometimes unsettling colours of Grey Card Gray. Both series make it clear that a photograph is never merely a neutral record. Every image bears traces of time, light and context. It can evoke memories, create expectations and alter our view of reality. It is precisely in the space between what we recognise and what eludes our perception that Sybren Vanoverberghe’s work unfolds.
