Studio23

We are pleased to invite you to 'Landforms', the first solo exhibition in the gallery by Dutch artist Mariette van Erp, opening on Friday, April 24, at 7 PM. A true powerhouse of an artist, van Erp has built a prolific and deeply personal body of work spanning more than four decades. Her paintings and drawings are not distant or observational—they are lived-in, grounded in experience, and shaped by an ongoing engagement with land, life, and existence. For van Erp, seeing is an act of surrender: a way of absorbing what is before her and allowing it to transform into something both tangible and elusive. Born in 1953 in Gemert (NL) and raised on a farm, van Erp was marked early on by the intimacy and violence of rural life. Drawing became a refuge, and over time she developed a direct, physical approach to making—one that strips away excess to reveal what is essential. The works presented in 'Landforms' are strongly expressive and often autobiographical. Created through quiet immersion rather than observation, her paintings emerge from being within the landscape rather than looking at it. Working outdoors, she allows rhythms, textures, and atmospheres to register physically before they surface in paint. ---- MARIETTE VAN ERP 'Landforms' ---- Vernissage Friday, April 24, 19.00 Exhibition Run Saturday April 25 - Sunday May 31 Open every weekend: 14.00 - 18.00 @mariette_van_erp #mariettevanerp #landforms #studio23 #paintings #artgallery

In Full Swing: Art Paris 2026 The fair has been a wonderful success so far, and we are thrilled to present our booth at Art Paris. Our presentation brings together Joren Van Acker and Johan Tahon, two of our key artists united by a shared sensibility and a deeply tactile approach to their practice. While Van Acker explores this through his maritime charcoal works, Tahon expresses it through his transcendent sculptural forms. Their dialogue unfolds through material and gesture, creating a quiet yet powerful resonance between drawing and sculpture. For this occasion, Joren Van Acker created an entirely new series especially for Art Paris, further expanding his nuanced exploration of atmosphere and artistic depth. ____ Fair Details: ART PARIS 2026 Location: Grand Palais, Paris, France Dates: April 9 – 12, 2026 (Preview and Vernissage: April 8) Booth: I24 | STUDIO23 @artparisartfair @jorenvanacker @johantahonwerkstatt #artparis #jorenvanacker #johantahon #studio23 #artgallery

Coming Up: ART PARIS 2026 We are honoured to invite you to join us this week at Art Paris, taking place at the Grand Palais from April 9 to 12 (Vernissage and Preview on April 8). On this occasion, we are proud to present a dialogue between new works by Joren Van Acker and Johan Tahon. Joren Van Acker brings a fresh, intuitive energy that explores the maritime realm with a sense of immediacy and openness. Johan Tahon offers a deeply rooted and contemplative body of work shaped by years of refinement and reflection. Together, their works enter into a compelling symbiosis: a conversation where emerging sensibilities meet seasoned mastery, where fragility encounters monumentality, and where both artists expand and challenge each other’s visual language. We would be honored to welcome you to experience this encounter firsthand. Please feel free to reach out if you would like a preview. We have tickets available. Art Paris 2026 Grand Palais, Paris April 9 – 12, 2026 (Preview and Vernissage: April 8) Booth: I24 | STUDIO23 Featured: 1. Joren Van Acker - Unto The North Sea, 2026 Charcoal on paper 150 x 180 cm 2. Johan Tahon - L'oeil sauvage, 2026 Stoneware 58 x 34 x 17 cm @artparisartfair

Opening Today: Art Rotterdam 2026 Our presentation at Art Rotterdam 2026 is now open, featuring works by Joren Van Acker, Johan Tahon and Mariette van Erp. With Joren Van Acker, we are unveiling a series of works that drift along the tides of the human condition—ever drawn toward distant horizons, forever seeking what lies beyond. Six monumental charcoal drawings emerge here, like uncharted shores revealed in shadow and light. A particular highlight of our booth is a compelling group of bronze and stoneware sculptures by Johan Tahon. With unmatched sensitivity, Tahon delves into the human soul—its longing for transcendence and its quiet, profound transformations from within. A luminous thread unfolds in the paintings of Dutch artist Mariette van Erp. Her abstract-figurative landscapes hover between perception and memory—where traces of the natural world dissolve into something inward and contemplative. Painted directly from life, her works echo the human condition’s enduring search for tranquility, as if each canvas were a place to arrive, to pause, and to be at rest. ____ Fair Details: ART ROTTERDAM 2026 Location: Rotterdam Ahoy, Ahoyweg 10, 3084 BA Rotterdam (NL) Dates: March 27 – 29, 2026 (Preview and Vernissage: March 26) Booth: C5 | STUDIO23 @art_rotterdam @jorenvanacker @johantahonwerkstatt @mariette_van_erp #artrotterdam #studio23 #jorenvanacker #johantahon #mariettevanerp

« Pour sa première participation à Art Paris, STUDIO23 (Gand) initie un duo show entre deux artistes belges qui expérimentent les liens fragiles entre identité et paysage. Oscillant entre la pesanteur terrestre et un détachement spirituel, les œuvres de Johan Tahon ouvrent un espace inédit au cœur duquel le visiteur peut se retrouver à travers l’expérience de l’inachevé et de l’incomplet. Joren Van Acker dirige quant à lui son regard vers le monde maritime, qu’il aborde comme un horizon mental et symbolique. Ses dessins, réalisés au fusain d’un noir profond, considèrent ainsi l’infini de l’océan comme un espace à la fois d’orientation et de perte, de contrôle et d’abandon. » “For its first participation at Art Paris, STUDIO23 (Ghent) is bringing together two Belgian artists who both explore the fragile connections between identity and landscape. Shifting between earthly gravity and spiritual detachment, the works of Johan Tahon works open up a new space, a place where visitors can experience the unfinished and the incomplete and, in so doing, perhaps find themselves. In parallel, Joren Van Acker turns his gaze towards the world of the oceans, which becomes a mental and symbolic horizon. His deep black charcoal drawings consider the infinite ocean as a place of both orientation and loss, of control and abandon.” 🖋️ Marc Donnadieu 🖼️ STUDIO23 (@studio23gent ) 1. Johan Tahon, Taboo, 2018 2. & 3. Joren Van Acker, The Search, 2026 4. Johan Tahon, Tanagra, 2026 5. Joren Van Acker, Docker Looking Up, 2025 💡 Secteur Promesses / Promises Sector #ArtParis #ArtParis2026 #STUDIO23 #JohanTahon #JorenVanAcker @johantahonwerkstatt @jorenvanacker @marc.donnadieu

Coming Up: ART ROTTERDAM 2026 We are delighted to invite you to join us at next week's Art Rotterdam, from March 26 to 29. Our presentation will feature works by Joren Van Acker, Johan Tahon and Mariette van Erp. Bringing these artists together, the presentation explores a shared sensitivity to form, material, and the human condition. While differing in medium and approach, the works resonate through a quiet tension between presence and absence, figuration and abstraction. Together, they create a contemplative dialogue that invites reflection on fragility and transformation. We would be pleased to welcome you at our booth and guide you through the presentation. Please feel free to reach out if you would like a preview. We have tickets available. Art Rotterdam 2026 Rotterdam Ahoy March 27 – 29, 2026 (Preview: March 26) Booth: C5 | STUDIO23 Featured: 1. Joren Van Acker - 'Fisherman Knotting His Nets', 2026 Charcoal on paper 172 x 147 cm 2. Johan Tahon - 'Cluny', 2026 Stoneware 126 x 40 x 32 cm 3. Mariette van Erp - 'Tripkau', 2023 Acrylic on hessian 30 x 40 cm @art_rotterdam

STEVEN BAELEN Grammar of Melancholy 23.01 – 15.03.2026 We are delighted to invite you to our next exhibition. In Grammar of Melancholy, Steven Baelen explores drawing not as a way of reproducing reality, but as a way of being present within it. His work moves across paper and canvas, pencil and paint, where lines, smears, and empty spaces become a visual language of memory, time, and emotion. Rooted in close observation of his intimate surroundings, Baelen transforms small, domestic impressions into new compositions. Human presence is absent, yet traces of lived time, atmosphere, and quiet tension remain. Drawing becomes a fragile, ephemeral act in which strokes shift roles, dissolve, and merge in the viewer’s psyche rather than on the page. After returning to oil paint, Baelen allows painting to behave like drawing. Lines remain delicate and expressive, contours are filled in like acts of recollection, and the surface itself plays an active role. Order and memory, structure and feeling, exist side by side. Steven Baelen (°1981) lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. He is a graduate of KASK and HISK in Ghent, and an alumnus of the JUNGE AKADEMIE in Berlin. His work has been recognized with a shortlist for the MAC International Prize (2014) and the ARTS laureateship from the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium (2016). Across the exhibition, drawing becomes both a rational system and a sensuous, intuitive moment of presence. Images emerge, shift, and dissolve, leaving behind subtle residues of experience — a quiet grammar of time, between revealing and concealing, hope and melancholy. The Vernissage is scheduled for Friday, January 23, starting at 7PM. We hope to welcome you soon. @steven_baelen #stevenbaelen #grammarofmelancholy #art #exhibition #studio23

Luxembourg Art Week 2025⁠ We are delighted to announce that our booth at Luxembourg Art Week 2025 opens today, 20 November, from 5–10 PM. The preview takes place this evening, with public visiting days beginning tomorrow. Come visit us to explore a curated presentation of works by Johan Tahon, Joren Van Acker, Steven Baelen, and Mauro Desmedt, complemented by a selection of recent artistic discoveries.⁠ ⁠ We are presenting a series of four large charcoal drawings by Joren Van Acker, centred on his enduring fascination with the maritime world and echoing themes from his recent exhibitions in Paris, Amsterdam, and at the gallery.⁠ ⁠ Johan Tahon is prominently featured with a compelling range of both earlier and newly created sculptures that capture human transformation in its most essential form. On view are ten ceramic works and three bronzes.⁠ ⁠ This year, we are pleased to introduce Ghent-based artist Steven Baelen, who will hold his first exhibition with us in early 2026. Baelen’s paintings and drawings move beyond the figurative, inviting the image to take shape within the viewer’s imagination. —⁠ Luxembourg Art Week 2025⁠ Glacis Square 20–23 November 2025 @jorenvanacker @johantahonwerkstatt @steven_baelen @desmavro @luxembourgartweek #johantahon #jorenvanacker #stevenbaelen #maurodesmedt #law25 #luxembourgartweek #art #gallery #studio23

We are delighted to invite you to the second solo exhibition of David Hytone (US) in the Gallery. Following his participation in the prestigious MacDowell Residency Program, Hytone emerges with a renewed clarity of vision - continuing to captivate us through the magnetic pull of his magical, surrealistic world. Surrealism has long been a vital thread in the Belgian artistic landscape, with Artists like René Magritte paving the way for new explorations of perception and reality. Within this tradition, Hytone's work resonates deeply - his compositions oscillate between illusion and introspection, inviting us into the poetic tension between the self and its many facades. We are proud to present a selection of new works that mark both an expansion and a refinement of his practice. Each work reflects Hytone's meticulous process and profound conceptual inquiry, yet together they reveal an artist increasingly comfortable navigating the fluid boundaries between memory, identity and imagination. With this exhibition, STUDIO23 reaffirms its commitment to showcasing Hytone's distinctive voice within the European art scene. The quality and emotional depth of these works make them not only a feast for the eyes, but also a coveted treasure for collectors. We hope to welcome you to David Hytone's As Much By Hearsay As By Fact : November 15 - 16, with the Vernissage on Friday November 14 at 19.00. The exhibition runs until December 20. #davidhytone #studio23 #artgallery

'STILLNESS AND FORM' 19.09 - 26.10.2025 Vernissage Friday 19.09, starting at 7pm. We are pleased to invite you to Stillness and Form, a group exhibition bringing together seven artists whose works breathe quiet presence and sculptural resonance. Each artist, in their own way, explores the tension between stillness and transformation—between the seen and the felt. Stillness and Form promises to be a gathering of artists whose works rest in silence and unfold through shape. Featuring: Joren Van Acker, Katja Lang, Johan Tahon, Mariette Van Erp, Luka Booth, Steven Baelen, Mauro Desmedt @jorenvanacker @_katja_lang_ @johantahonwerkstatt @mariette_van_erp @lukabooth @steven_baelen @desmavro @visitgent @stadgent @uitin.gent

The Double-Headed Figure: Guardians of Paradox Across the ancient world, one image appears again and again: the human figure with two heads. In Mesoamerica, the Tlatilco people shaped clay figurines of women whose faces looked in opposite directions. These were not curiosities, but symbols—expressions of life and death, of time’s endless cycles, of the mystery of opposites bound together in a single body. In Mesopotamia, the figure reappears as Isimud, the two-headed vizier of the god of wisdom, Enki. With one face turned forward and the other back, he was the perfect messenger—able to cross thresholds, to see what lies behind as well as what lies ahead. The Romans later imagined something similar in Janus, the god of doorways and transitions, who watched over beginnings and endings, past and future. In these traditions, the double head was never a flaw. It was a gift: the power to hold two worlds at once. Centuries later, Christian mystics gave this ancient image a new spiritual depth. Hildegard of Bingen saw the human being as a microcosm of the cosmos, where body and soul, male and female, reason and emotion converge in harmony. She spoke of viriditas—the greening power of the soul—that springs forth when opposites meet. Meister Eckhart went even further, teaching that in the hidden ground of every soul, Christ is born again and again: a union of human and divine, humble and exalted. Through their eyes, the double-headed figure becomes not a sign of conflict, but of wholeness. It reminds us that true completeness does not erase difference—it embraces it. To see with two faces is to see more deeply, more widely: to hold together heaven and earth, beginning and end, the many truths of existence, reconciled in one. Johan Tahon - 'One', 2025. The small sculpture was released in an edition of 60, celebrating the exhibition 'Into The Eyes', making it accessible to a wide audience as a collectors' artwork. @johantahonwerkstatt #johantahon #intotheeyes #sculptures #ceramics #stoneware #studio23 #artgallery #art

We've just welcomed a full house to the first intimate encounter with Johan Tahon at his exhibition 'Into The Eyes', nestled in the heart of Ghent. Guests experienced the works through the artist’s own gaze and sensibility — a rare and moving occasion. In September, we offer a final opportunity to take part in an Artist Talk with Johan Tahon. A limited number of places remain. Please, let us know if you'd like to attend. JOHAN TAHON | ARTIST TALK Sunday, September 28 at 14:00 | Artist Talk with Johan Tahon This engaging conversation with the artist will delve deep into the themes and inspirations behind Tahon’s creations. #johantahon #intotheeyes #exhibition #studio23 #art #sculptures #artgallery #ghent