Johan Tahon, The Flower of Nature, 2021, Stoneware,
140 x 40 x 40 cm.

During out first art fair of the year we will be presenting new work by Janine van Oene and Johan Tahon.

You do not need to purchase a ticket. Neither do you need to register to enter the fair during public opening hours. However, due to Covid restrictions, maximum capacity of the fair at all times is limited to 60 persons. If you want to ensure access to Ballroom Project at a certain time, you can reserve a time slot here.

The full catalogue for Ballroom Project #3 is now online at Gallery Viewer.

Starting May 5th, you can browse the Ballroom catalogue for an advance look at the 60+ works on view during the third edition of the Ballroom Project, from 12-16 May at BorgerHub, Antwerp. The catalogue contains a unique selection of key artworks by 40 artists, represented by 20 leading galleries from Belgium and the Netherlands.

Also in the catalogue: information on the participating galleries and their artists, interviews with select artists, and more!

Twenty years immersed in trance-like obsession, the work of Johan Tahon (1965, Belgium) has always bordered craft and invocation, hunger and higher-calling. Tahon has refined his life and environment into a crucible from which he summons works that carry all the powers of the beyond he seems to have access to. A thirst for understanding drives him to always return to his subconscious, an imperative to create a haven to retreat to and investigate what drives him, unobserved from others and himself. His sculptures stand emanating a deep gravity and vigorous materiality, at once both towering and tactile. Their surface is turbulent, drenched in hand-mixed glazes of celestial blues, ancient whites and more recently, silvers rendering the work both ethereal and aglow. Currently his oeuvre is on view at the exhibition UNIVERSUS at Museum MOU of Oudenaarde.

Johan Tahon (1965, BE) work can be found in public collections such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, SMAK Ghent (BE), and MARTa Herford (DE), among others, and in important private collections in the United States, Switzerland, Turkey and Belgium. In 2017 Tahon completed a publicly commissioned monument in Hannover (DE) and had two major solo exhibitions in National Museum for Ceramics Princessehof, Leeuwarden and Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht. Recently, the work of Tahon was on view in New York and Basel and is currently on display at Museum Dr. Guislain in Ghent (BE), Musée Ariana, the Swiss museum for ceramics, PARK, Tilburg (NL) and ARTZUID, the Amsterdam Sculpture Biennial (NL).

The medium of painting itself is the core of Janine van Oene’s (1988, NL) practice. The buttery quality of oil paint, the magic of mixing and the hunt after the right color is what drives her. For Van Oene stretching a canvas and preparing the paint is like setting the table for dinner; starting with a basis of carefully chosen linen she slowly works towards a composition that over time carries vases, dishes and decorative napkins folded into fans. Van Oene’s work is abstract in nature, but finds its origin in still lifes and the depiction of interiors. The images give a suggestion of raw fish on shiny dishes, scallops and fruit or laced curtains, but remain obscure to unambiguous interpretation. Layer after layer she searches a way out of the abstraction, back to a rather melancholic fake reality of outdated interiors, plastic flowers and forgotten curtain patters. She hunts for absurd and excessively stylised details in faded magazines and in memory drenched objects, to let these resurface in the work in unexpected ways. This motionless world is brought to life with the physical act of painting large calligraphic forms, intuitive moves in a puzzle Van Oene has to solve by pushing herself always further towards a solution.

Janine van Oene lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2014 she graduated from the HKU University of Arts in Utrecht, The Netherlands and was s resident at De Ateliers in Amsterdam from 2014 to 2016. In 2017 Van Oene was selected for the Prospects & Concepts of the Mondriaan Fund and was awarded the Dutch Royal Prize for Modern Painting and in 2020 she was awarded the Jeanne Oosting Prize. The work of Van Oene is housed in various collections, such as De Nederlandse Bank, KMPG, The Royal Art Collection and ING Art Collection, AkzoNobel, among many others.