Day & Night

Surrounded by Campine heathlands, the picturesque village of "Genck" was a renowned station d'artistes in the Late Romantic period of 1840–1930. Numerous artists visited this creative colony to paint the landscape en plein air. Emile Van Doren (1865–1949) played a central role in this movement, and today his villa showcases his work and that of his contemporaries as a public museum with its own collection.

Van Doren was a virtuoso in capturing fleeting moments of transition, especially the first glow of dawn and the soft fading of evening light. In this group exhibition co-curated by conservator Kristof Reulens and Mounir Eddib, contemporary visual artists enter into dialogue with these Romantic landscape painters of the past. Different generations meet one another in a play of shimmers and shadows.

Eddib also contributed the oil painting Fluisteringen (Whispers), which consists of oil, lead, tin and indigo cloth on canvas, with a partial wooden frame. This work depicts a haunted mining hill, an industrial landscape that Emile Van Doren refused to paint because it was his aim to document the fading beauty of "natural" landscapes that were rapidly changing in his time.

Photos by Tristan Meers and Stefanie Schaut (painting details).