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The M HKA reserves its fifth floor for surprise events and intimate pop-up presentations. INBOX is a place that both inspires and surprises, and grants us a glimpse into the universe of passionate thinkers and doers. With INBOX, M HKA creates a physical space in which the museum addresses often-reccuring questions. In between the various events, we show a selection of our collection work, paying particular attention to video art.

In the paintings of Stef Driesen (born in Hasselt in 1966), dainty shapes seem to float against a dark background that draws in, as it were, the viewer’s gaze. His work cannot be reduced to a pure language of form, because the particular atmosphere which the paintings evoke is significant. In the transcendental fields of Driesen’s work, the influence of abstract expressionism and colorfield painting is unmistakeable, but also of Oriental art in which the negative space is an important recurring theme. When he evokes tension between light and dark, background and foreground, soft and hard, and female and male through form and colour, Driesen manages to add a certain dynamism and spatial dimesion to his paintings. His remarkable interplay of light and dark, where the artist creates the interaction between threat and vulnerability, reflects the gloomy atmosphere of a toxic world image.

While Driesen’s work develops towards the more abstract, the human representation is not completely gone from his canvases. The body is still palpable in the texture of the paint and in the floating, faint outlines. The use of colour has become heavier, the palette of grey and pink skin tones more intense. Where before, the landscape in Driesen’s work clearly silhouetted against the background, it is now reflected in the space that extends into the layers of the paint. The unfathomable depths and slopes in the paint seem to depict a vast panorama.

This project was realized in cooperation with G262 Sofie Van de Velde.