17.09.25 – 21.09.25, NOON collective, And now the beginning is somewhere else

Tom Callemin's artistic research starts from the question of how identity and meaning arise within our perception of images. These processes are constantly changing now that digital and artificial techniques effortlessly generate convincing realities. The photographic images we are confronted with every day increasingly show us a fictional illusion. A fundamental tension is particularly evident in portraiture: behind the skin of the synthetic body lie not psychology or emotions, but merely mathematical calculations of data.

Based on this theme, Callemin set to work with analogue materials such as plaster, wood, clay, shadow and light to create new images that challenge our perception. Like a mirror, each image is a reflection of our gaze and of the act of depicting itself. What do we see? Can we believe the image as it presents itself to us? To what extent do we ourselves give meaning to what we see, apart from what is happening before our eyes?

In the exhibition, Callemin's photographic work is combined with an extensive archive of visual material that addresses these issues throughout history and in different contexts. The developments we are confronted with today in the field of visual culture are not new. With the advent of each medium, such as painting, film and sculpture, which once constituted a technological innovation, similar questions arose about image, meaning and illusion.

A third section of the exhibition stems from the collaboration with filmmaker Griet Teck, who translated the visual research in Callemin's studio into a short film. We get a glimpse of how details from the studio form an illusion in front of the camera. Entire landscapes are constructed in the privacy of the studio as a second reality, where reality unfolds slightly differently. This reveals the underlying constructions of the images that Callemin meticulously builds up. It becomes clear that his images carry an illusion not only in their subject matter, but also in their creation.

Tom Callemin is an artistic researcher affiliated with KASK & Conservatorium, the school of arts of HOGENT and Howest. The research project “Hidden in Plain Sight” was funded by the HOGENT Arts Research Fund.

On 15 January 2026, Tom Callemin, artistic researcher at KASK & Conservatorium, will defend his doctoral reasearch to obtain the title of Doctor of Arts. On behalf of the candidate's supervisors, Dr. Anouk De Clercq (KASK & Conservatorium) and Prof. Dr. Koenraad Jonckheere (UGent), we would like to invite you to this event.

The public defense will start at 15:00 in the Zwarte Zaal on Campus Bijloke. Afterwards, you are welcome to attend the reception. The exhibition Double Reality (Research Output) can be visited at the same location before and after the defense. Please confirm your attendance at the public defense by emailing tom.callemin@hogent.be.

Tom Callemin's artistic research starts from the question of how identity and meaning arise within our perception of images. These processes are constantly changing now that digital and artificial techniques effortlessly generate convincing realities. The photographic images we are confronted with every day increasingly show us a fictional illusion. A fundamental tension is particularly evident in portraiture: behind the skin of the synthetic body lie not psychology or emotions, but merely mathematical calculations of data.

Based on this theme, Callemin explores how we can still understand or trust images. He works with analogue materials such as plaster, wood, clay, shadow and light to construct new situations that exist on the border between reality and illusion. These tangible, material elements counterbalance digital representations and at the same time reveal that every image – however convincing – is a constructed reality.

His images therefore function as mirrors: they turn the gaze back to the viewer and to the process of meaning-making itself. What exactly do we see? Can we believe the image as it presents itself? And to what extent do our own expectations, doubts and projections determine what we perceive? Callemin's research makes it clear that the encounter between image and observer creates a constantly shifting landscape of interpretations, in which identity and meaning are never stable data, but are constantly being reshaped.

The research project Hidden in Plain Sight was funded by the HOGENT Arts Research Fund.

Praktisch

Due to roadworks at the Godshuizenlaan / Groot-Brittanniëlaan intersection, it is very difficult to reach Louis Pasteurlaan by car and to park there. Please use public transport as much as possible. From Gent Sint-Pieters, you can take tram T1 or T3 to Bijlokehof. Here you can find instructions on how to reach the Bijloke site during the roadworks.

The most accessible route (including for wheelchair users) is via the entrance at STAM, Godshuizenlaan 2.

Animation spans multiple dimensions of our lives. It is a magical, philosophical, physical experience, and a form of social action. Coming from a background in engineering and science, Pedram began his artistic practice as an animator in 2015. Meanwhile, he frames animation rather as an encyclopaedic practice: a multidimensional study exploring the intersections of art, science, humanity, and technology.

This exhibition traces a dialogue between Pardeh-Khani – (literally, “reading the curtain”) – and contemporary animation. This ancient Iranian art of pictorial storytelling combined painted canvases with epic poetry, music, and performance. Storytellers brought images to life through voice, gesture, and rhythm, while audiences engaged collectively, experiencing knowledge through multiple senses.

In Pedram’s practice, Pardeh-Khani endures both as a tradition and as a method—a way to activate archives and perform knowledge, shaping how we communicate, learn, and make sense of the world. The exhibition gathers a decade of practice (2015–2025) – including installations, drawings, sketches, paintings, VR, and video fragments – bringing Pedram’s archive into view while opening toward new departures.

On 27.11.25, on the occasion of the opening, two performances will take place from 19:00 onwards. Teacher Paul Demets will open the evening with poetry, and Amin Azizi will close it with music!

Pedram Kargar is an artistic researcher affiliated with KASK & Conservatorium, the school of arts of HOGENT and Howest. The research project Behind the curtains of animation was funded by the HOGENT Arts Research Fund.

With A Spirit in Painting, Antwerp-based artist Tom Poelmans reveals the reverse sides of a wide selection of works spanning the past fifteen years, exhibited in the side gallery at KIOSK. Poelmans shows the reverse sides of a wide selection of paintings made over the past fifteen years. These unseen backs often bear titles, dates, sketches, material traces, and other marks: silent witnesses to the process and the life of the studio.

On December 6, two weeks prior to the closing of the show, all works will be turned around, revealing their front sides for the first time. That same day, the book A Spirit in Painting will be launched, published by MER. Alongside front and back views of a broad selection of works, the book includes drawings and poems by Tom Poelmans, as well as texts by people close to him.

The title of both the exhibition and the publication is a nod to the legendary 1981 show A New Spirit in Painting, held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. That historic exhibition marked a renewed appreciation of painting as a medium, and offers a meaningful backdrop to Poelmans’ reflection on his own practice.

In her exhibition Alles pelt zich, Veronika Eberhart presents new work unfolding the layered relationship between materials such as solid wood, veneer, and the machines and tools of woodworking themselves. Removed from their original function, the pieces displayed shift from being utilitarian devices to possessing autonomous existence, hovering between object and sacred presence. Fine incisions and nuanced gestures prompt questions of aesthetics, interiority, and personal experience.

With subtle surface interventions and manual processes, Eberhart considers how labor, design, and memory inscribe themselves into matter. Her works resist fixed interpretations and evoke an extimacy of space, where intimacy and distance blur.

About Veronika Eberhart

Veronika Eberhart is a visual artist and musician based in Vienna. The use of media in her works is distinguished both by its high musicality and the negotiation of conceptual issues with the sensitivity of artistic practices of feminist positions and art history. United in a transdisciplinary approach to video, sound, performance, or sculptural installation, her practice is based on theoretical and historical research and seeks formal translations.

Granted with the Theodor-Körner-Award for Fine Arts (2017) and the Schindler Stipendium at MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles (2019). Recently, she has presented solo exhibitions at KOB- Museum for Contemporary Art, Eupen (2023), Kunsthalle Feldbach (2022), Kunsthalle Graz (2022), Bazament Art Space, Tirana (2018), New Jörg, Vienna (2018), Neue Galerie Graz / Studio (2017) and has appeared in group exhibitions at HKW Berlin (2024), ISCP Open Studio, New York (2023), Makey Garage Top, MAK Center Los Angeles (2020), Kunsthalle Vienna (Vienna Biennale 2019), Kharkiv Municipal Gallery (2019), Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna (2018), rotor Graz (2018) and in the A-GALLERY, Tokyo (2017), among many others.

Parallel programme

• 10.11.25, 20:00
  Screening of films by Friedl Kubelka/vom Gröller, followed by a conversation with Friedl Kubelka/vom Gröller and Veronika Eberhart at Art Cinema OFFoff, Kunsthal Gent..
• 11.11.25, 20:00
  Screening of Impatience (1928) by Charles Dekeukeleire and 9 is one and 10 is none (2017) by Veronika Eberhart at Art Cinema OFFoff, Kunsthal Gent.

🖤 **Doomscroll Slumber Party** 🖤

✨ *Scroll together into oblivion – but cosily and in your pyjamas* ✨

Are you someone who ‘quickly checks the news’ before going to bed and then startles awake three hours later to an obscure video about the end of the world? **Good news:** you don’t have to do it alone anymore.

📱 + 🛏 + ☕ = 💀 ❤ Welcome to the **Doomscroll Slumber Party** – the place where doomscrolling can finally be social. 

What to expect:
🖤 Snuggling up together on the sofa while silently staring at a screen
🖤 Light-hearted competitions: who can find the most depressing reel?
🖤 A safe space for deep sighs and nervous laughter
🖤 Blankets, snacks, blue light filters and tea
🖤 And yes, occasionally a real conversation **Because when the world ends, we'd rather do it together – in comfortable clothes.

** 🎟 Bring yourself, your friends and possibly your comfy pyjamas **#doomscrollslumberparty #gezelligtenonder #togetherinthedark**

KIOSK opens the new exhibition season with Onder Verzachtende Omstandigheden, a solo exhibition by Belgian artist Leen Van Tichelen. The show is the result of GROUND ZERO /51.04536/3.71609, a multidisciplinary residency in which Van Tichelen collaborated with performer Fanny Vandesande, composer Esther Coorevits, and word artist Jonas Bruyneel.

Throughout the summer, KIOSK was transformed into a living studio - part laboratory, part rehearsal space - where image, language, movement, and sound intersected. Boundaries were questioned, shifted, and rewritten.

The exhibition brings together the traces of this process: remnants, transitions, and an ongoing search for form within a space in flux. Onder Verzachtende Omstandigheden is not an endpoint, but a temporary anchoring in a landscape that keeps on moving.

The second performance of GROUND ZERO also marks the opening of Onder Verzachtende Omstandigheden. The exhibition by Leen Van Tichelen brings together the traces of this process: remnants, transitions, and an ongoing search for form within a space in flux.

About the project

Throughout the summer months, KIOSK became the home of GROUND ZERO /51.04536/3.71609, a multidisciplinary residency led by visual artist Leen Van Tichelen, who invited performer Fanny Vandesande, composer Esther Coorevits, and word artist Jonas Bruyneel. Over three months, the artists collaborated across disciplines—image, word, movement, and sound—merging their practices into a fluid, site-responsive methodology.

While the gallery remained closed to visitors, KIOSK itself transformed into a living studio—part laboratory, part rehearsal space—where boundaries are tested, unraveled, and rewritten.

The title, GROUND ZERO /51.04536/3.71609, marks both a beginning and a place. The geographic coordinates point to the exact site of the performance, grounding the inquiry in a specific reality while opening space for new artistic trajectories to emerge.

Support the project

To financially support the project GROUND ZERO / 51.04536 / 3.71609, Leen Van Tichelen created a special edition. Here’s a warm invitation to visit the crowdfunding page on voordekunst.nl.

Throughout the summer months, KIOSK becomes the home of GROUND ZERO /51.04536/3.71609, a multidisciplinary residency led by visual artist Leen Van Tichelen, who invited performer Fanny Vandesande, composer Esther Coorevits, and word artist Jonas Bruyneel. Over three months, the artists collaborate across disciplines—image, word, movement, and sound—merging their practices into a fluid, site-responsive methodology.

While the gallery remains closed to visitors, KIOSK itself is transformed into a living studio—part laboratory, part rehearsal space—where boundaries are tested, unraveled, and rewritten.

Catch an early trace of this continuously unfolding project at Bijloke Wonderland, where GROUND ZERO reveals its first public moment, shaped as much by change as by the physical and conceptual landscape it occupies.

The title, GROUND ZERO /51.04536/3.71609, marks both a beginning and a place. The geographic coordinates point to the exact site of the performance, grounding the inquiry in a specific reality while opening space for new artistic trajectories to emerge.

Support the project

To financially support the project GROUND ZERO / 51.04536 / 3.71609, Leen Van Tichelen created a special edition. Here’s a warm invitation to visit the crowdfunding page on voordekunst.nl.

For the sixth year in a row, you are invited to Bijloke Wonderland, a summer cultural festival from Thursday 21 to Sunday 31 August at the bustling Bijloke site in Ghent. Expect tantalising sunrise concerts, free summer bar concerts, theatre, dance, visual arts & tours. Discover special locations on the Bijlokesite and get carried away by a programme for young and old. This year, for the first time, there will be a continuous programme for 11 consecutive days.

KASK & Conservatorium presents music and visual art by students on the open lawn of the Bijlokesite. Six diverse installations form a temporary landscape, culminating in a musical intervention. KIOSK serves up a performance. The Kunstenbibliotheek organises a zine festival and presents a selection from their zine collection.

The programme is presented by organisations at home on the Bijloke site: Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, LOD muziektheater, STAM, laGeste, Ontroerend Goed and KASK & Conservatorium (HOGENT-Howest).

ongoing

• Kunstenbibliotheek & Shif—t*, Summershelves #2
• Aagje Vandriessche, Capteren
• Vicente Fuenzalida Lafourcade, Floating Garden
• Jean Paul Simons, In de zomer van 2017 werkte Jean Paul Simons enkele maanden
• Michiel Vindevogel, Oculus
• Gill Slosse, Remaining Shadows
• Layla Morando, When Doves Cry

Thu 21.08.25

• Kunstenbibliotheek, Zine-festival, 15:00

Sat 23.08.25

• Leen Van Tichelen, Fanny Vandesande, Jonas Bruyneel & Esther Coorevits, GROUND ZERO /51.04536/3.71609

Sat 30.08.25

• SONduo, Zomermiddagdroom Konzert, 16:00

Sun 31.08.25

• SONduo, Zomermiddagdroom Konzert, 14:30