Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

His training as an architect might explain why Van Mullem has always been drawing. He claims that drawing lies at the origin of painting. Until recently, he has mostly been known and renowned for his depictions of phantasmagoric faces, reflecting on what lies within. Lockdown made him embark on a new horizon, that of his (inner) garden, now offering perspective on the outside world. The vegetal dimension calls for serendipity and the artist’s colour palette blooms through the dreamy landscapes. The overall effect culminates in a peculiar luminescence enhanced by the use of printing and etching inks.

Johan Van Mullem’s work seems to emerge from art history’s underlying memoirs : the secular themes, portraits and landscapes each take place in his œuvre and radiate with a dazzling yet elusive presence, endowing it with a religious, even initiatory aura. At the very heart of the Old Masters Museum, his drawings, paintings and sculptures come together in a duality that tends to reconcile our dark side with the hope that inevitably drives us. 

Between emotions and memory, between movement and light, some fifty new works, sometimes of an impressive format, open up a timeframe far from any urgency, and offer the public a new perspective, inscribing contemporary creation in its historical roots.

Exhibition's curator: Sophie HASAERTS

Art Historian Sophie Hasaerts is Belgian and based in Brussels. She is a private and public project manager in the artistic field. She is a true believer in the power of artistic creation and what it can provide to an urban community in terms of curiosity and open mindedness.