SkinDeep
Curated by Cindy Wright, SkinDeep brings together the practices of Silvia B., Anya Janssen, Renato Nicolodi, Klaus Verscheure, and Cindy Wright under the roof of the Belgian Gallery.
Belgian Gallery, Rue de Florence, 39 – 1050 Ixelles
The title refers both to skin as a physical presence and to the surface through which we first encounter an artwork. That surface may attract, unsettle or resist us. In SkinDeep, the surface is not something to be dismissed or simply looked beyond, but the point where looking begins and from which further layers and relationships can gradually unfold.
Across painting, sculpture and video, five distinct practices enter into dialogue. Their connections are not reduced to a single shared theme, but arise through proximity and contrast: organic and architectural forms, intimacy and distance, attraction and discomfort, vulnerability and control. At times the works reinforce one another; elsewhere they create tension or open up a different way of seeing.
Anya Janssen’s portraits and close-up images of the body combine intimate realism with alienating colour and light. Her figures have a strong psychological presence yet remain elusive, allowing the images to unfold slowly and leaving room for doubt and interpretation.
Renato Nicolodi’s sculptures draw on archetypal architecture while stripping it of function and ornament. Their corridors, stairs and inaccessible interiors lead the gaze towards an unseen centre, transforming physical structures into mental spaces for memory, absence and reflection.
Cindy Wright transforms photographic source material into psychologically charged paintings that bring art- historical traditions into dialogue with the present. Their visual precision draws viewers towards subjects in which beauty and discomfort, vulnerability and transformation coexist, making recognition the beginning rather than the end of looking.
Silvia B.’s meticulously constructed sculptures combine human, animal, natural and artificial elements into hybrid beings. Their seductive appearance gradually gives way to unease, questioning familiar boundaries between nature and culture, attraction and repulsion, and the body and its constructed image.
Klaus Verscheure uses painting and video to reduce images to their emotional and psychological core. In Kain & Abel, the biblical narrative is stripped back to an act of violence, confronting viewers with human behaviour and with their own position as spectators.
The exhibition has been composed with attention to rhythm, contrast, scale and visual weight. Individual works establish connections across the gallery without fixing them into a single interpretation. Anya Janssen’s The Hands of God and Evil opens the exhibition, while Klaus Verscheure’s Kain & Abel forms its final counterpoint. Positioned at opposite ends of the exhibition, they create a subtle echo around human relationships and their complexity while retaining their distinct meanings.
SkinDeep does not prescribe a single reading of these practices. Instead, it creates a setting in which surfaces become encounters and each work can alter how the next one is seen.
