Emptiness surrounding me
The exhibition Emptiness surrounding me focuses on a number of curious, often underexposed motifs in Roger Raveel's oeuvre. One of these concerns the boundaries and scale of the painting, and the way the image relates to the space in which it is displayed. Not infrequently, Raveel plays with those specific dimensions: he opens or breaks the image with windows, vistas, large colour zones and white squares. The painting expands into its surroundings. How to understand this spatiality, Raveel leaves to the viewer. Is it a kind of emptiness? Or an ‘absence’ of matter, a portal between the viewer and the painter? A walk past rarely shown works lets visitors reflect on this.
From February 2025 to June 2026, the Roger Raveel Museum will close its doors to undertake some urgent climatic and energetic interventions in both museum wings, the exhibition rooms, the depot and the office spaces. As a temporary farewell, this selection of paintings and drawings from the museum's collection will be brought together and hung sparingly. The monumental rooms by architect Stéphane Beel are stripped down, as it were, making them come into their own. They enhance the spatial effect of the artworks, and conversely, the works enter into a dialogue with the spaces.
Curator: Melanie Deboutte
Festive inauguration: Sunday 3 November 2024, 11am-5pm