31.10.26 – 20.12.26, Stress Test, On Fathers, Fatherhood, and Fathering

On Thursday, October 1, we celebrate the launch of De Spijtige Herder3, a magazine devoted to art and poetry, edited by Gerard Herman, Nel Aerts, Jan Op de Beeck, Arne Bastien and Vincent Geyskens.

This third issue features:

• An exclusive interview with Hans Werner Poschauko—Maria Lassnig’s personal assistant and confidant—about working and living with the artist.
• A series of drawings by Jolijn Baeckelandt.
• A number of texts exploring the place of painting in the contemporary art world. These texts emerged from HAND & HORIZON, a “seminar on painting” that we organised at KASK in March of this year. Students and lecturers from Leipzig, Malmö, Helsinki and KASK Ghent came together to give lectures and discuss painting (see the table of contents attached).
• A recent self-portrait by Vincent Geyskens, reproduced as an unnumbered screen print on the back cover.

During the launch evening, poetry will be read by:

Brunhilde Von Braun
Veva Leye
Vincent Geyskens
…

There will also be live music.

het balanseer presents Het kwaad by Frank Vande Veire:

We live in strange times. We accuse one another of racism, sexism, fascism, self-enrichment, indifference... On the internet and in the press, insinuations and condemnations rain down, as if we were taking part in a contest in which we try to outdo one another in moral outrage. At the same time, there is rarely any talk of evil, and even less of ‘sin’. These concepts are dismissed as outdated, overly religious or metaphysically charged, remnants of a pernicious Judeo-Christian legacy. In his werpsels, Frank Vande Veire breathes new life into these concepts. He turns his attention to the evil that rages in the world and within ourselves, prompted by a philosophical or literary text, a news report, a documentary, or a personal experience. He delves into the depths of our envy, (self-)hatred, resentment... Human beings torment others because they are tormentors of themselves.

About Frank Vande Veire

Frank Vande Veire has previously published the novels Bloeiende Agatha (2013) and Het einde van alle straten (2022) with de balanseer. He has also written philosophical essays on art, literature, and social phenomena: Als in een donkere spiegel. De kunst in de moderne filosofie(2003), Neem en eet, dit is je lichaam (2005), and Tussen blinde fascinatie en vrijheid. Het mensbeeld van Slavoj Zizek (2015).

Throughout July and August, Ommery De Zutter inhabited KIOSK as artist in residence. While KIOSK remained closed to the public during the summer, Ommery De Zutter, used the anatomical theater as a map for creating an immersive VR experience. 

Ommery De Zutter’s exhibition de Wereldgeest, resulting from this residency, opens on 12 September and will be on view until 4 October.

What happens when creationbecomes materially endless?

When skills as a means of creation begin to play a secondary role? 

How would expression unfold then?

In what way would it be different? 

Is it valid?

Does it remain valid when it continues to be about itself?

Or does creation then become too entangled in itself?

And if that is the case, why shouldn’t it simply be allowed to

When does creation become useful to the Other?

Isn’t creation emerging from creation itself precisely creation?

Does it make sense to investigate the same idea from emptiness when someone has already taken it up from an established position?

Can we accept it when creation is no longer intended for us? 

Where does the balance with the Other lie during creation? 

Is the imbalance of time and energy with the Other not precisely what is necessary for creation?

Are we also the Other? Are we without the Other?

Does thinking about creation and the Other disrupt the existing balance?

Isn’t it simply obvious that the next forms of creation will move beyond our own abstraction, emerging from semantic-geometric constructions that surpass our own understanding and give rise to new realities?

For the finissage of Hisae Ikenaga’s solo exhibition Anatomies of Use, Céline Vahsen presents a sound performance in which gestures visibly and physically cause the acoustic landscape.

Through repetitive and manufacturing gestures, industrial materials resonate and bring manual labour into rhythm. Vahsen will also use pottery made by her aunt: utilitarian objects that reconnect her with the past.

Her aunt worked in a ceramic and glass manufacturing company that later became her own, until the late 1990s, when open trade and capitalism contributed to the decline of smaller industries. Playing with vessels, plates and bowls — first functional, then obsessive, then ceremonial — Vahsen transforms everyday objects into resonant instruments carrying personal, social and industrial histories.

Some elements of the choreography are part of a collaborative practice she started in 2025 with percussionist Aya Suzuki.

An unconventional choir performance by a group of FLINTA*-people investigating the relationship they have to their voice. Together they welcome vulnerability through whispers, stutters and echoes, while also showcasing the power of a collective voice in resisting patriarchal norms. This performance grew out of the master project Exploring a Feminist Voice by Anne Rosa Lut.

The performance is organized on the occasion of the last day of Hisae Ikenaga's solo exhibition Anatomies of Use.

Performers
Anne Rosa Lut, Imme van Zuilekom, Kika Vens, Elvira Mahieu, Kim Heerkens, Sofie Vanderbauwhede, Vera Goldhoorn, Elfine Radwanski, Hriedt Van Biervliet.

Trinkets, strings, handmade kits and stones that sing: the songs of activated non-instruments will fill the reverberant expanse of Ghent's Kiosk for a double bill that straddles the fringe between concert and installation. Maryia Kamarova's propelling sculptures meet Mosquito Farm's mishmash of structured chaos, all against the backdrop of Hisae Ikenaga's uncanny archeologies in KIOSK's ongoing exhibition, Anatomies of Use, to counter the cross-disciplinary dissonances.

Maryia Kamarova
A sound universe constructed from fragments of nature and treasures of the everyday ~ Belarusian artist Marya Komarova creates spatial settings somewhere along the border of sound installation and meditative performance. Her electro-acoustic gizmos and environmental compositions come alive under her actions and inertias, taking their own destinies into uncharted aural territories and inhabiting spaces as intently as the spectators who fall under their spell.

Mosquito Farm
Two years after their appearance at KRAAK Fest, Maddie Banwell and Grace Black return with Mosquito Farm to show the evolution of their musical contraptions. Bowed metal wobbles, tin cans rumble, fans whir and swirl, and improvised percussion setups drill a beat into action as radio transmissions feed the drone. Perhaps something resembling a guitar or a wind-up hamster might make an appearance ~ anything's a possible player in this hypnotic orchestra of happenstance.

For her first solo exhibition in Belgium, Hisae Ikenaga presents a selection of existing and new works. The title Anatomies of Use refers to the subtle displacements that structure her practice: shifts of function, status, and meaning. Industrial and domestic objects are appropriated and reconfigured, their use suspended, their familiarity unsettled. Forms appear stabilized, as if halted after transformation, revealing tensions between use, form, and memory.

Ceramic works extend this reflection through the figure of the cylinder, borrowed from industrial lamination tools and transposed into pottery. The motif becomes form, matrix, and trace of gesture. In a new video in collaboration with film director Paula Onet, Soft Dissection, artisanal and medical gestures intersect, opening an ambiguous space between workshop and laboratory. Through these displacements — from tool to object, from gesture to image — Ikenaga constructs an archaeology of the present, where each form becomes trace, sculpture, and question.

About Hisae Ikenaga

Born in Mexico City in 1977 to a family of Japanese origin, based in Europe for more than twenty years and currently living in Luxembourg, Hisae Ikenaga has developed an artistic language that unfolds at the intersection of design, archaeology, and surrealism. She studied art theory and visual arts in Mexico, Kyoto, Barcelona, and Madrid. Her work reveals a fascination with the afterlife of manufactured objects: their programmed obsolescence, their capacity for transformation, and their potential to host new forms of life. Each sculpture embodies a tension between the industrial and the handmade, between the cold logic of production and the fragile warmth of the human hand.

Support

The exhibition at KIOSK is co-curated by Charlotte Masse, curator and Head of Exhibitions at Konschthal Esch, who organized Ikenaga’s major solo exhibition Phantom Limbs in 2024.

Hisae Ikenaga received the generous support of the Fondation Schleich-Lentz for the production of a new series of ceramic works for the exhibition at KIOSK.

With the support of Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg.

On 15 March 2026, Joost Pauwaert activates his exhibition A Good Hammering with a performance.

For KIOSK, Pauwaert has created a large-scale installation in which heavy machinery, saw blades, and festive objects converge in an explosive visual language that evokes both wonder and unease. This new presentation promises to be an intense, physical experience that fully engages the unique character of the Anatomical Theatre.

Als theoreticus kon er een tekst geschreven worden. Over een foto waarop een trommelaar afgebeeld stond. Een foto uit het archief van Walter Benjamin. Als theoreticus kon er dan een tekst geschreven worden die daarover ging. En ook over Henri Bergson en Marcel Proust en Gilles Deleuze en Sigmund Freud en Franz Kafka. En ook over het woord ‘abschied’ en dat dat in tweeën gesneden kan worden, en over de durée waaruit de dood gewist is, en over ‘das schloss’, en over herhaling en verschil, en over ‘jenseits des lustprinzips’, en over onze pogingen om met het niets om te gaan, en over ‘mémoires involontaires’, en over ‘the inbetweenness of things in general’, en over de retroreflectieve vezels die de spanning tussen het aanwezige en het verdwijnende stimuleren, en over de polyfonische harmonie van voorbijgaande gebaren die convergeren in een compositie van tegenstellingen.

Maar als kunstenaar is dat allemaal een beetje moeilijk. Schrijven over dingen. Schr schr ijven ov erdingen. Ov erdingen. Zelfs het performen opzich (niet an sich!) is al veel werk. Ook vervelend vaak om zo jezelf in de belangstelling te zetten. Bel angts elling. Bel angst elling. Liever helemaal niets zeggen. Zeker geen ingewikkelde dingen. Van ingewikkelde dingen komt denkerspurée. Denk en schrijfpurée van allerlij denkers en schrijvers. Hu hu ja ja ik ben wel geïnspireerd door de Ethica en het theologisch politiek traktaat van Spinoza en de boeken van Perec. Heb je Zijn en Tijd al eens gelezen? Eigenlijk is het wel ik twijfel dus ik denk dus ik ben in plaats van ik denk dus ik ben! En vergeet trouwens niet dat taal een misverstand is hé . . .

Liever helemaal niets zeggen. Niet eens echt performen. Gewoon een technisch medewerker zijn ofzo, weggecijferd op de achtegrond, maar stil en onmisbaar. Laat iets anders het werk voor je doen. Zeker als het vermoeiend zou zijn. Doe zelf iets gemakkelijk.

Waar weinig talent voor nodig is. Maar maak vooral geen woorden vuil aan woorden. En maak ook geen woorden vuil aan een tekst die je liever niet zou schrijven. Doe maar niet alsof en geef toe dat je ‘tijd en vrije wil’ toch nooit echt goed begrepen hebt.

de durée, wat was dat? pe purée, mat mas pat?

BELANGRIJK(!):

Wat je kan verwachten: bijna niets.

Wat er gezegd moest worden: toch maar iets.

Once a year, KIOSK invites a Belgian artist for a solo exhibition in the space of the former Anatomical Theatre. On 24 January 2026, Joost Pauwaert opens his new exhibition, A Good Hammering.

Trained as a photographer and shaped by his background as a carpenter, Joost Pauwaert has become known for his bold kinetic sculptures, installations, and performances that balance on the threshold between power and vulnerability, destruction and beauty, technique and poetry.

For KIOSK, Pauwaert has created a large-scale installation in which heavy machinery, saw blades, and festive objects converge in an explosive visual language that evokes both wonder and unease. This new presentation promises to be an intense, physical experience that fully engages the unique character of the Anatomical Theatre.

Joost Pauwaert ’s work explores the relationship between power, beauty, and poetry, often infused with a playful, childlike curiosity. He integrates familiar and symbolic imagery that evokes both recognition and tension. Pauwaert is drawn to the aesthetic of the imposing and the monumental, balancing this with a sense of the caricatural and symbolic wonder that softens its intensity and opens up imaginative possibilities.

About Joost Pauwaert

Joost Pauwaert (1985, Bretzenheim, DE) works and lives in Wilrijk, BE. In the past years his works have been exhibited in numerous exhibitions during several gallery group and solo exhibitions at BARBÉ and other venues such at Ooidonk Art Festival, C-MINE in Genk, Art Brussels w/ Dauwens & Beernaert, Art Cologne w/ Galerie Eric Mouchet (FR), Archipel at Deweer Gallery Estate (Otegem), Art Rotterdam w/ BARBÉ, Ponti gallery (Antwerp), Pizza gallery (Antwerp), Gevaertsdreef (Oudenaarde), PASS kunstroute (Lede) and Emergent in Veurne. After his 2nd solo The End Is Near in 2024 accompanied by the performance Apocalyptic Triumph Parade, one of the sculptures was acquired by Museum of Deinze en De Leiestreek. He also participated in the debut exhibition of ABBY, the contemporary museum in Kortrijk (BE).