Philippe Van Cauteren – författare

This compelling book is the result of a project intended to visually communicate the hardships endured by Iraqi communities. Utilizing art materials donated to camps by the Ruya Foundation for Contemporary Culture in Iraq, these 350 drawings were created by some of the country’s 1.8 million refugees, providing a necessary outlet for their immense suffering and struggles associated with being temporarily displaced from their vocations as lawyers, teachers, farmers, and mothers. Originally presented as an exhibition at the 2015 Venice Biennale, this publication features a large group of these drawings exclusively selected by the artist and activist Ai Weiwei. Harnessing the power of visual art as a means for both personal expression and socio-political awareness, this innovative book represents the humanistic effort to provide a voice for the underrepresented and their unimaginable strife.Mercatorfonds is donating all profits from the sale of this book to the refugee camps in Iraq.Distributed for Mercatorfonds

A stunning tour through the renowned, wide-ranging collection of contemporary art at Ghent’s Municipal Museum for Contemporary Art (S.M.A.K.)The Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (translated as the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art and commonly abbreviated as S.M.A.K.), located in Ghent, Belgium, has quickly established a reputation for both a superlative permanent collection and provocative exhibitions since it opened to the public in 1999. The museum’s collection focuses on international developments in art after 1945, including works by artists such as Francis Alÿs, Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Luc Tuymans, and Bruce Nauman. S.M.A.K. Highlights for a Future showcases the full range and exceptional quality of the museum’s holdings, illustrating some 200 artworks, from well-known masterpieces to less-familiar, recent acquisitions.Distributed for Mercatorfonds

A comprehensive overview of the oeuvre of Belgian painter Jan Van ImschootA comprehensive overview of the oeuvre of Belgian painter Jan Van Imschoot (b. 1963), whose contemporary work builds bridges to predecessors such as Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Goya, and Manet.Van Imschoot’s painting consciously opts for a clear, sometimes contradictory and ironic style. The directness of his decisive brushwork and his balanced yet audacious use of color is strikingly contemporary, while his work draws on historical themes from literature and art history. In this way, Van Imschoot engages in a continuous dialogue with the past, in which he, with a dose of cynicism, often targets phenomena or figures that find themselves on the fringes of (contemporary) society.Bringing together more than 220 works by Van Imschoot with five accompanying texts, this book gives fresh insight into the painting practice of this Belgian master.Distributed for Mercatorfonds

Angel Vergara’s work tests the limits of art and reality by questioning the way the contemporary image shapes the intermingled public and private spheres—as well as our own experience  Angel Vergara’s (b. 1958; based in Brussels) work is a continued investigation into the power of the image. By means of performances, videos, installations, paintings and drawings, he tests the limits of art and reality. Each of his works is an attempt to break through the image and to make its impact on an aesthetic as well as a sociocultural and political level. Thus, Vergara creates a new, suspended reality, grown from the artist’s personal dialogue with reality and with the image by which it has already been transformed. Decontextualised images of reality are mediated by the artist and transformed into art, encouraging the viewer to question their way of perceiving the everyday as well as the way it is presented to them in images. Vergara’s art disorients and disconcerts the viewer. It questions what is known and opens paths to new modes of signification.Accompanying the 2023 retrospective exhibition “In the Instant” that the MACS is dedicating to Angel Vergara, this important book reviews the career of the Belgian artist and highlights the close relationship between his painting and the cinematic medium.  Distributed for Mercatorfonds  Exhibition Schedule:  02.11.2022–02.06.2023Outside installation. Musée de la batellerie—Conflans Sainte Honorine, France.  24.11.2022–19.03.2023Photo Brut - Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels  23.04.2023–08.10.2023Angel Vergara. In a Moment. Monographic exhibition. MAC’s in Mons, Belgium.

Arpaïs Du Bois’ book, Feue La Joyeuseté, further opens the door to her intense universe. The publication, designed by un’dercast, combines her output on paper from the last four years. Extensively introduced by Damien Sausset and including a letter by Philippe Van Cauteren (director of SMAK, Ghent), this book is the ultimate successor of her previous publications - all of them specific gems, both for their concept as for their design. Feue La Joyeuseté takes you on a road trip inside the artist’s brain and makes you a spectator, a witness instead of a passer-by. With more than 450 works on paper, it is opulently illustrated.A soft voice, almost a whisper in the noise of the world. A soft voice that tells of time standing still, of wanderings of the soul, of trials of the heart. And about the impending thunder or the breeze that makes the canopy sway. A soft voice in which the suspicion of death roars as fiercely as the vibrant hopes of everyday life. Anyone willing to listen to it will hear all this in the sentences of Arpaïs Du Bois. For this 'secret' artist writes words, loose thoughts or snippets of text on sheets of paper that still shiver from the colours they have drawn. No beautiful poems or heroic stories here. The power of these words lies in something quite different. How do you draw with and against language?Text in English, French and Dutch.