St. Vincents is delighted to host the first solo exhibition of works by Barcelona-based, Antwerp-born artist Yaël Hupert. “Volver” opens to the public on Thursday, November 24 and is on view at St. Vincents’ through January 28, 2023.

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Yaël (b. Antwerp, 1987) is a Belgian artist whose portraiture paintings puncture the membrane between dream and reality. With the exception of Ezequiel — the first and only male figure painted thus far — the majority of Yaël’s subjects have been female, tied together by their stoic gaze. A distant facial expression, void of any semblance of a smile, evokes powerful, confident figures living in a vibrant, colourful world.

Inspired by scenes of everyday life, her subjects belong purely to her imagination. With no two characters alike, Yaël allows the process of what she calls “doll dressing” to reveal their unique personality through an individual sense of style. This process – to dress, undress and repeat – can take several months or years to finalise and receive the finishing touch, their names.

Her debut exhibition “Volver” — [bolˈβer] spanish irr. v. meaning “to return” — marks the artist’s return to Antwerp since her move to Barcelona 4 years ago and introduces eight new characters – Ezequiel, Deema, Minju, Nour, A-Min, Niobé, Grace and Dakota – . Adorned with colourful clothes, accessories, hair and make-up, her works celebrate diversity and reveal her personal sense of inner and outer beauty.

St. Vincents is delighted to present an omnibus of new functional works by Maastricht based designer and furniture-maker Lukas Cober. “Glassy Conditions” is the designer’s first solo exhibition in Belgium and opens to the public on Thursday, September 29 at St. Vincents, and is on view through November 19, 2022.

“Glassy Conditions” — an allusion to Lukas’ passion for surfing and the glass-like nature of his latest works — is a natural extension to his previous Kuro and New Wave furniture collections.

Guided by an instinctive pursuit of process and materials his show puts forth a selection of furnishings with added works such as lighting, shelving, seating and tables.

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In 2018, after a tenure working alongside revered artist Valentin Loellman, Lukas launched his eponymous studio with a small collection of leather goods. While experimenting with stretched leather Lukas found inspiration for his first furniture collection, Kuro. Since then he’s developed a unique visual and material language that skilfully incorporates hand-sculptured wood, fiberglass and resins across all his designs.

An alumnus of Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design and Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade of Lisbon, Lukas Cober (b. Aachen, Germany 1989) settled in Maastricht, Netherlands in 2018 to launch his multidisciplinary studio. He creates works characterized by their sculptural and architectural finesse, as an answer to his search for pureness in shape and materiality. He debuted his Kuro furniture collection at St. Vincents in January of 2019 and has, since then, been featured prominently in trade publications and presented his work through renowned galleries and exhibitions across the globe.

‘What was I thinking?’ explores the relationship between meaning, text and the photographic image from the perspective of the tourist image, the travel report. Photography and tourism have been inseparable since the beginning. Increasingly, however, the photographic image of the tourist is a rigid, dogmatic construction of that which one must have photographed. Tourists, as Sontag (1979, On Photography) observed, seem to feel obliged to place a camera between themselves and what is remarkable, important. The photographic image replaces experience and looking, and has become that which is real. In ‘What was I thinking?’ Tomas Vandecasteele shows images taken in Abu Dhabi, Tokyo, Las Vegas, Mumbai, Dubai, Roussillon and Colombo. By means of (digital) motion blur, colour manipulation and the addition of text, he emphasises the complex relationship between reality and the tourist image.

In collaboration with Otomys Gallery, St. Vincents presented new works by Greek artist Nikomachi Karakostanoglou. Traversing mediums, and mapping the physical and sensorial connections between them, “symbiosis” embodies a gilded luminosity reflective of religious iconography. A radiant fluidity pervades each piece, amplifying Nikomachi’s aptitude for finding synergy – between drawings and sculpture, between art and its reflection of the human soul, between nature and people, and between the existential and theoretical worlds – to unify artworks in such a way that the symbiotic relationships between them is palpable.

Marijke De Cock lives and works in Antwerp, where she previously studied Fashion at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. She has been working for years as a designer within the team of Dries Van Noten, where she specialises among other things, in the conception and creation of exceptional ornaments and jewellery. An engagement that in a sense inspired her personal practice, by adopting an established craft that is usually related to the garment it is meant to serve, yet which she allows to function autonomously and in full. It is an ancient and traditional, time-consuming technique – involving working with glass beads and passed from generation to generation – which she sensibly juxtaposes with her fascination for the hand that, as it were, moves by itself, seems to make its own decisions, and transcends thought. It all together manifests itself in distinctive series of abstracted, intuitive wall sculptures which, adorned with beads, above all celebrate the desire to create, using a material that goes back thousands of years, motivating us from childhood onwards to invent ornaments with it, to embellish a person or a place.

Referencing primary shapes and architectural forms STUDIO MC, founded by Jessica Coates & Michael Müller, aims to make the viewer question their expectations of an object. With their ceramic objects there’s an ongoing inquiry related to the human need to categorize objects. It raises questions as to what happens when an object has an assigned category like function or art work.

Ultimately all work can be traced back to the vessel and it’s various traditions. Be it in the classical sense of something that can hold liquid or flowers, or in a more architectural sense, where the function of a vessel houses a more intellectual or spiritual meaning.

Based in New Zealand, WAYNE PATE‘s work focuses on rendering objects and interiors in his signature simplistic and sophisticated style. With a bold subject matter and a fresh color pallete, Pate often uses pieces of canvas or linen to collage and create layers beneath the paint.

From his travels, Pate has amassed an impressive collection of historical objects, lebrillos, jugs and water pitchers which subtly recur throughout his work, giving voice where there is none.