The ground floor at the S.M.A.K. is devoted to paintings from the museum's collection, highlighting not only the special characteristics and background to the collection but also the painting medium in relation to its current status in the arts.
A series of painterly motifs – including figuration, composition, gestures, abstraction, reproduction and post-medium developments – are explored throughout the seven exhibition rooms and assessed on the basis of their present-day relevance. Nowadays, painting has become a multidisciplinary practice in which such elements as paint, support and canvas are employed purely conceptually. Nevertheless, as a ‘mentality’, contemporary painting remains close to the medium’s traditional approach, by continuing to react against the notions by which we become addicted to meaning, as manifested in many other forms of contemporary art. The exhibition comprises work by more than forty artists from the museum’s collection, including Karel Appel, Francis Bacon, Michaël Borremans, Marlene Dumas, Rainer Fetting, Lee Kit, Konrad Lueg, Oscar Murillo, Navid Nuur, Henri Michaux, Kelley Walker and Marthe Wéry. EXPO GUIDE Download expo guide
