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What’s the Story? highlights the dialogue between the KMSKA collection and contemporary artists. Curators Nico Van Hout and Erno Vroonen have arranged themed ensembles to invite visitors to explore connections between modern-day creators and their predecessors. By juxtaposing works across centuries, the exhibition reveals how universal themes evolve over time, showing how artists influence and build upon each other’s ideas. Visitors are encouraged to uncover the hidden stories behind the works and interpret them in their own way.

Life and Death

The first gallery contrasts life and death. Jacob Jordaens’ mythological scene brims with vitality, mirroring Maen Florin’s hybrid ceramic sculptures that blend beauty and menace. Kati Heck’s grotesque paintings, featuring friends and family, explore revenge and mortality, echoing themes in Jan Massijs’ Judit.

Seduction

Three Belgian artists—Evelyne Axell, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, and Liliane Vertessen—critique the portrayal of women as sex objects. Axell’s Pop Art celebrates female emancipation, while Vertessen’s neon-lit photographs play with the roles of seducer and innocent. Van Kerckhoven’s multimedia works bridge abstraction and eroticism, questioning perceptions of Good and Evil.

Storytelling

In the final gallery, Rinus Van de Velde’s monumental charcoal drawing and Jozef Legrand’s “Picture Sculptures” respond to Constant Permeke’s The Man with the Jacket. Van de Velde’s stormy “one-shot movie” invites viewers to unravel its narrative, while Legrand challenges spectators to shape their own stories, making them central to the experience.

The KMSKA museum guide and artist Igor Beloushenko will take you on an engaging and fascinating tour of this exhibition.