BOUTROS Gallery
September 24 to October 17 2026
MAX VAN DE PERRE and KENDALL DE RUE
- GESTALTEN -
Two artists, two educations: Kendall studied painting, Max graphics, both graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. During their years at the academy, Kendall and Max met each other. From a shared interest in image, form, and perception, a continuous exchange of ideas and critique of each other's work emerged. They now continue this dialogue within the space of BOUTROS Gallery: in visual form, with recent work and an invitation to the visitors to participate.
Kendall and Max both start from a figurative interest in everyday life. In their observation of reality, they seek a form of abstraction that aligns with their way of thinking. These abstractions do not arise from a completely isolated imagination, but stem from a meticulous analysis of their perspective, of what is in front of them. By focusing on color relationships, rhythm, structure, and form, they isolate the most abstract qualities of the subjects and translate these into their layered compositions.
Max Van de Perre started from lithography, in which he developed a minimal visual language that concentrated on color and form in its most essential form. He then developed this approach on canvas. The origin of his motifs lies in the public space. He observes objects, structures, and situations detached from their original context and examines how their meaning can shift when they are reduced to purely visual properties.
The tension between precision, subjectivity, and visual poetry forms an important driving force in his work. Max's color language and constructed compositions are central. From these controlled starting points, he tries to guide forms towards a certain autonomy. Abstraction for Max does not arise from mere imagination, but from a shift in perspective: by changing within the canvas the way in which the viewer stands in relation to reality.
Kendall's work is situated in the tradition of figurative painting. He starts from the landscape as a subject and searches for the intersection between abstraction and form. The relationships between the different planes of the landscape form the basis of his work. He tries to reduce these interrelationships to their essence and then translate them anew into paint.
Kendall seeks the abstract in the observable and at the same time seeks the figurative in the abstract. By constantly moving between these two poles, a new constellation emerges in which the landscape no longer functions solely as a recognizable subject, but also as a reason for an investigation into paint, proportion, and perception.
Although both artists start from different artistic traditions and media, their visual language overlaps in fundamental ways. In this exhibition, they tell a new story about color, form, and meaning. The works reflect not only on their years at the academy but also on their current practice and the direction in which their work can further develop.
The German verb ‘gestalten’ means to shape, but can also be understood as to create meaning: a visible idea, or to load a visible form with meaning. This interaction is central to this exhibition. The paintings explore the intersection between abstraction and figuration. They suggest recognizable forms while also leaving space for imagination and interpretation.
May 14 to June 13, 2026
MARTINA RÖTLING
- MAD ABOUT YOU -
In MAD ABOUT YOU, the second solo exhibition of Martina Rötling at BOUTROS Gallery, the artist presents a series of works that reflect on the nature of intimacy, emotional attachment, and obsession. The project explores how the proximity of a body intensifies our feelings, as if desires and vulnerabilities are absorbed and expressed through the skin in a process of stigmatization.
The works consist of fragmented and anonymous images of the female body: fleeting impressions of the neck, back, or hands. Subtle surface details – a scar or bruise, bright light spots – form a mosaic of memories of desire and emotional intensity.
In addition to the bodily fragments, plants and flowers such as magnolia and sea thistle appear in the work, as visual metaphors for the fleeting and changeable nature of human feelings. Flowering plants exist by definition in a state of transition, floating between emergence and decay. Blooming represents a period of heightened intensity, as it can manifest between people in vulnerable, temporary but wonderful moments of passion and connection.
The images evoke a lovely and intimate perspective that is universally recognizable: the silent observation of the other, of their breathing and presence. In this way, the work unfolds a collective consciousness about the human experience of desire and connection.
MAD ABOUT YOU addresses the thin line between tenderness and fixation and shows us how affection can turn into obsession, how care can become all-consuming, and how intimacy can have a destabilizing effect on personal boundaries. The exhibition constructs a visual language in which the body becomes both subject and surface, an unstable archive of feelings.
Martina Rötling (*1987) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, in the studio for contemporary painting. She has extensively exhibited her work, both in her home country and abroad, in solo and group exhibitions. She currently lives and works in Antwerp.
March 27 to April 18, 2026
MIEKE GEUËNS
- SAMPLES -
Plastic films, cardboard, and metal are pressed into compact volumes, thus forming a new kind of still life: sharply defined, sculptural, and charged with internal tension. The materials clash in their properties – glossy versus matte, soft next to hard, intact next to damaged – creating a visual friction that forms the basis of the series.
Although the paintings appear almost photographic from a distance, the slowness of the medium becomes visible up close. The paint carefully captures every fold, fracture line, and reflection. Transparent plastics break the light, colors begin to vibrate, and the compositions acquire an almost graphic intensity. The ephemeral nature of the waste sharply contrasts with the attention and time embedded in the paintings.
The tension between beauty and decay, attraction and repulsion, forms a common thread throughout the work. The materials remain recognizable as by-products, but are simultaneously detached from their original function. They become image, rhythm, color. Geuëns’ fascination with the graphic play of lines, folds, and color contrasts is as defining as the thematic context of consumption and waste streams.
Sara Colson
January 31 to February 14, 2026
KARIEN MAES
- FREEDOM -
Karien Maes graduated in 1988 with a Master in Graphic Design from the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. In her work as an artist, she primarily focuses on drawing and painting. She lives and works in Borgerhout.
This new series of paintings in acrylic and oil paint situates itself in a subtle in-between space, where the body strives for a contour and simultaneously resists it. In this tension lies an idea: the tendency to reduce ourselves to a role or form, while we realize that we are more than the boundaries that define us in relation to the outside world.
Freedom, as Karien Maes suggests, is not an endpoint but a way of looking: a willingness to find meaning in the unfinished. These canvases suggest that it is precisely in the incomplete that our humanity is expressed. Just as life is an invitation to choose for ourselves what we do with our possibilities.
October 31 to November 22, 2025
LEADERS OF THE NEW
- 5 Master Painters from the class of 2025 -
For the 11th exhibition at BOUTROS Gallery, I invited 5 painters who will complete their Master's in 2025. The selection was made during visits to the end-of-year exhibitions at Sint Lucas Antwerp, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent, and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Through this personal selection, I wanted to provide a platform for a number of promising and emerging artists, without compromising the quality of the work of their alumni.
Femke Goyvaerts, Victor Delafontaine, Lotte Vandenbussche
Sint Lucas Antwerp
Fee Maertens
Royal Academy of Fine Arts Ghent
Max Van de Perre
Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp
Femke Goyvaerts
The paintings of Femke Goyvaerts are colorful translations of the absurd in everyday life, reflecting on family, identity, and the often uncomfortable dynamics that arise between them. A recurring element is the use of a grid pattern in the clothing of the characters. That pattern serves as a visual thread, a connecting motif that symbolically links the figures to a shared family organ.
The works invite the viewer to a mental switch: what do I see? Where can I recognize myself in? And why should I (perhaps) laugh at this? Humor thus becomes not only an aesthetic choice but also a form of reflection, comfort, and critique.
Acrylic on canvas - 2025 - 106x64cm
Victor Delafontaine
Painting is for Victor Delafontaine a direct and parallel dialogue with his environment and his inner self. From this, works emerge from an intuitive, non-linear process that influence each other in his studio and together form a larger whole from the parts. The painter acts as a storyteller and translator; his works are impressions and reductions of the places he visits and the person he is.
untitled
Acrylic on canvas - 2025 - 90x70cm
Lotte Vandenbussche
A portrait without a face often has more substance than one whose identity is visible. The work of Lotte Vandenbussche revolves around her fascination with images of people whose faces are covered or indeterminate and who question the personality behind the mask. Individuality and self-expression are central to Lotte and her paintings are an attempt to capture that which cannot be expressed in words.
Self-portrait (triptych)
Acrylic on canvas - 2023 - 120x50cm
Fee Maertens
There seems to be a constant variability in the paintings of Fee Maertens. Nothing is fixed. Background becomes foreground, becomes space in between, becomes frame, becomes form and transforms the same moment into something else. Everything seems to be constantly searching for identity. Nothing can be named as just that one thing, but is continually influenced, and affected by the presence of other elements.
By pushing this crisis to the limit through a play between the balance of figure and background, positive and negative, perspective, dual forms, and color, every anchor is missing. Defining is postponed. This lack of anchor and the inability to do ‘naming and framing’ serves the act of looking itself as the subject.
untitled
Oil on canvas - 2025 - 210x150cm
Max Van de Perre
Max Van de Perre started his training as a graphic artist, focusing mainly on lithography. His artistic process gradually led him to painting, from which we can discover some works in this exhibition. Van de Perre realized in that process that he did not need to come up with something new or require a long period of research for his work to evolve, but that by looking at his surroundings differently - at road markings, buildings, textile patterns, the layout of a pack of cigarettes - he could adopt those forms and interpret their essence with paint on canvas.
Iconic Attempt IV
Acrylic on canvas - 2025 - 49x80cm
September 20 to October 11, 2025
GILBERT LENS
- cutting branches for a temporary shelter -
For his second solo exhibition at BOUTROS Gallery, Gilbert Lens collaborated with Naninga Lens, who took on the role of curator.
The artistic talent of Naninga was perhaps ignited by the bohemian in her father and by the time they spent together in his painting studio, accompanied by a soundtrack of eccentric jazz and Gilbert’s philosophical reflections.
This is the first time that these two generations officially engage in dialogue about art and about the paintings of Gilbert, resulting in a special exhibition. We would like to invite you to come discover this personal selection of works with us.
The gallery is freely accessible from September 20 to October 11, every Friday and Saturday from 2 PM to 6 PM. Opening reception September 20 from 2 PM until late.
window exhibition #3 - summer 2025
Victor Delafontaine
Mei 23 to June 21, 2025
ULYSSES
OST
UNDERGROUND
OPPORTUNITY
Diamonds in cut form are generally considered the most beautiful thing that humanity has been able to extract from nature. Yet they arise in the most extreme and destructive conditions. From chaos to beauty: that is the magic that Ulysses Ost as an artist brings to life time and again.
For this series of oxidation prints on mylar drumheads, Ulysses drew inspiration from the different shaping techniques used to turn rough diamonds into jewelry.
Ulysses Ost (Maaseik, 1976) graduated in 2010 from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. During his studies, he interned with Berlinde De Bruyckere and Guy Rombouts and as an alumnus he was a laureate of the Horlait–Dapsens prize.
His work balances between the spontaneous and the staged and essentially revolves around experimentation, transformation, and an open attitude towards reality — light-hearted, sometimes critical, and always rooted in the here and now.
Ulysses prefers to work underground and rarely emerges of his own accord at the prominent facade of the art scene. So don't miss this opportunity to admire his work in the security of a gallery space.
March 29 to April 26, 2025
ICHIRO SATO TESSEN and MACHTELD DE RYCK
- ABSTRACT POETIC -
Sumi-e or ‘painting (s) in black ink (sumi)’ is a Japanese offshoot of East Asian painting with washed ink on paper or silk, which originated around the year 500 in present-day China.
In the Japanese post-war avant-garde movement, this technique held a special place: artist collectives brought in the years 50s and 60s of the last century, calligraphy and sumi-e internationally to the level of abstract expressionist painting that at that time especially in the US reached high peaks.
Ichiro Sato ‘Tessen’ (Japan, 1947) incorporated Eastern techniques and pigments from his cultural heritage and began to apply them to prepared canvas, a classic Western medium.
Machteld De Ryck (Borgerhout, 1984) also works significantly with ink. Her oeuvre arises more often than not from an inner unrest that she expresses in her visual language and that can come to expression in working with ink and charcoal.
These two artists work from their feelings and meditatively and have little need to seek appreciation for their work outside their own artistic practice. They operate autonomously and without expectations, and that in an ancient artistic tradition of ink and organic pigment.
window exhibition #2 - early 2025
STERRE DE VRESSE
- Bathroom Portrait n°2 -
Sterre De Vresse is a young Brussels artist who paints and creates mixed-media art.
About this work, Sterre says: “In a world with a manic, sometimes panicked obsession with the appearance of young women, a self-portrait of mine can only carry a certain weight. If you are a woman, looking at and interpreting your own exterior is essentially an emancipatory act. Whether you want it or not.
Additionally, I have a lot of interest in masks. From death masks to beauty masks.. both an attempt to capture something in time. Masks to protect or conceal, to celebrate or to mourn... I find them all fascinating. And nice to combine with my love for portrait art."
October 10 to November 9, 2024
KARIEN MAES
- WALK ON BY -
For Karien Maes, people are in a sense at the mercy of the fact that they were almost randomly thrown into the world and just have to see how they experience that life. Her characters in these paintings literally walk around, doing their everyday things or being spectators of events that do not matter in the paintings and are not perceivable to us.
We look at them as you notice various passersby daily and glance at them fleetingly, without making contact with them. Yet their image sometimes stays with us.
Those are the images that Karien has painted. Her characters radiate a sense of lostness and loneliness, immersed in their own thoughts.
At the same time, the paintings are enjoyable without fuss and are so close to the core of what makes us human that any deeper reflection becomes unnecessary.
August 29 to September 21, 2024
- SUMMERTIME -
The exhibition SUMMERTIME draws inspiration from the aria of the same name by George Gershwin, interpreted and covered by the greatest artists including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Janis Joplin.
The works of Angelique de Limburg, Carole de Block, and Anouk Antoine carry the atmosphere of summer within them. In their poetry, the feeling of freedom or of endless vacations in the sweltering nature.
Carole de Block is a visual artist born in Ostend. Her oil paintings are based on her own photos and on drawings and watercolors from her sketchbooks. Carole looks at the world around her and translates it onto canvas with a poetic dimension that deepens the act of seeing while simultaneously commenting on and documenting the influence of humans on their natural environment. Her current landscapes capture memories of an apparently simpler world where summers were primarily innocent and endless.
Angélique de Limburg uses a variety of materials and techniques to capture the beauty, harmony, and mystery of the natural world and human nature itself. Her work is characterized by a sense of mystique and a deep connection to the natural world.
The abstract color palette of Anouk Antoine is in itself an expression of summer abundance that gives the viewer a sense of delight. The richness of hues underscores the message: we are free to explore creation and to harvest from it. Creation in art - and also in life.
George Gershwin's SUMMERTIME is, with at least 25,000 recordings, the most covered song in history. This variety of interpretations evokes the countless ways in which a painter can interpret and elevate her world with pigment and brush. These three artists succeed brilliantly in this and each contributes in their own way to the wonder of the visual arts.
window exhibition #1 - summer 2024
- ANATOMY OF A KAPSALON -
In the summer of 2024, we showcased 'anatomy of a kapsalon' - a 3-meter high painting that displays the various ingredients of the popular snack.
May 16 to June 15, 2024
PAVOL TRUBEN and LUCIA ZITNAYOVA
- FRAGMENTS & MYTHS -
FRAGMENTS and MYTHS showcases works by two Slovak artists: Pavol Truben (°1985) and Lucia Žitnayová (°1994).
Truben, a multidisciplinary conceptual artist, returns to a more traditional medium in his series The Fictional Mythology of the Wolf and the Rabbit, in which he presents meticulous utopian drawings in dry pastel. The wolf and the rabbit have strong ties to the Slovak countryside, where legends and myths have historically maintained their opposite positions of hunter and prey. Through irony and polemics about their utopian co-existence and possible new roles, Pavol Truben also addresses complex relationships in today's polarized society.
Žitnayová deviates from traditional painting techniques and experiments in her series m³ admixture with materials added to colors to create new surfaces in her paintings. And she doesn't stop there; she continues to materialize her paint in this way into objects. She created an alternative space for the experience of your childhood while studying the detailed fragments and structures that emerge like a playground from the canvas.
The selected works in Fragments and Myths are intended to invite you into a different visual world. A world where you are challenged to open your mind, see the unseen, be vulnerable, and be open to new narratives.
Curated by Martina Rötling
March 21 to April 20, 2024
MARTINA RÖTLING
- THE SOFT FALL -
Martina Rötlingová (°1987, Slovakia) works mainly in figurative painting with which she critically analyzes and evaluates the female experience in relation to digital media.
Martina's artistic work can be included in the feminist discourse within which she repeatedly criticizes the stereotypical norms and standards of female beauty that are presented by the media.
In the exhibited cycle of works she reflects on physicality, female identity and relationships between man and woman. Her thought process brought her to the issue of revealing female sexuality, exposing nudity and self-representation on online dating networks. She explores in that context the boundary private/public; but also virtual/real.
November 17 to December 16, 2023
GILBERT LENS
- SAFE FROM HARM -
In the painted works of Gilbert Lens there is a special place for portraits and stories, which show the human in all its variations.
In addition to faces from the artist's intimate circle, we see iconic acquaintances and anonymous fellow sufferers. Without exception, they are meticulously portrayed as their authentic selves. Free from worries, stripped of their moral dimension, protected from the weight of life.
As Gilbert himself puts it: “In my love for the language of the image, I find meaning and significance. Looking and recording provide me with great pleasure and intense satisfaction.”
September 22 to October 27, 2023
- retrospective EARNEST -
EARNEST paints about the essence of being human. She draws her inspiration from the energy of daily life and seeks as an artist with paint, pigments, and other materials for light, but also for lightness, detachment, complete freedom from frames and expectations, and excelling in intuition.
May 12 to June 17, 2023
- EXPO 3x3 -
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