IDIORHYTHMS
Opening reception on March 19th, 2026
From 5 - 9 PM
COUR
Groenplaats 42,
2000 Antwerp, Belgium
1st Floor
The exhibition Idiorhythms assembles four artistic practices whose core could be described as ‘elemental’. Each leverages the unique properties of a chosen material to achieve a kind of tactile virtuosity. Each also eschews industrial production in favour of artistic autonomy and skill, the bedrock of a highly individual style.
The term ‘idiorrhythmia’ originally referred to a ‘self-regulated’ form of monastic life, in which monks lived side by side but followed their own internal schedules in work and worship. In places like Mount Athos, where idiorrhythmic monasticism endures, the texture of monastic life is thus neither communal nor entirely solitary. It is a fantasy of coexistence without synchronisation, of living together apart (à la Roland Barthes).
In the realm of artistic production, rhythm has a trifold meaning: it could say something about the personal routines, rituals, and research methods accumulated throughout an artist’s career; it could indicate a frequency or mode of engagement with the commercial circuit, a certain relationship to showing work, between poles of exposure and productive silence; or it could bear on the material itself – the bulk and grain of wood planks in dynamic juxtaposition, fur patterns hand-stitched onto cloth, the waning translucence of urethane rubber, the chilled lustre of black steel.
The exhibition does not calibrate or harness these rhythmic signatures. It draws attention to the luxuriant tone of their entanglement and resonance, and to the straightforward poetry of the objects that convey them.
Works by
@grrraceatkinson
@lewiskemmenoe
@noir_metal
@richaybar
Photos by
@eliasasselbergh
Graphics
@stanvanrompaey @mariedkeersmaecker 
