Artist Residency Latem

26 February - 21 June 2026 | Koperstraat 2, 9830 Sint-Martens-Latem

Opening Thursday 26 February 2026 : 19:00-22:00
Koperstraat 2, 9830 Sint-Martens-Latem

26/02 - 21/06/2026
Open on Sat. & Sun. 14:00 - 18:00 and outside opening hours by appointment.

desk@barbegallery.be
+32 (0) 9 391 39 13

Curated selection of gallery artists:

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Solo project exhibition by:

Gideon Kiefer: 26/02 - 8/03

Nokukhanya Langa: 14/03 - 12/04

Willem Boel 18/04 - 10/05

Jens Kothe: 16/05-24/05

Adelheid De Witte: 30/05 - 7/06

Joost Pauwaert: 13/06 - 21/06

Gideon Kiefer - The Party Is Over |26/02 - 8/03/2026

Gideon Kiefer ( 1970 ,Neerpelt, BE) works and lives in Sint-Martens-Latem, BE. Gideon Kiefer delves into memories from his childhood and youth. He poses the question to what extent these recollections are truly representative of reality, while allowing the romanticization and imagination, so characteristic of such retrospection—to unfold freely. In doing so, multiple readings of these memories emerge, as though they are being carefully unearthed from beneath the surface. Over the past years, he has exhibited in numerous international solo and group shows in galleries, art fairs, and institutional venues. His work is part of institutional collections such as Museum Dr. Guislain (B), Bank Delen (B), the Metzler Collection (LU), the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (B), Museum Voorlinden (NL), and Collection Guerlain (FR). In 2025 he has been nominated for Le Prix de dessin de la Fondation d’Art Contemporain Daniel et Florence Guerlain 2025 followed by an acquisition given in loan to the collection Museum Centre Pompidou in Paris (FR). Recently the Flemish Community acquired one of his works for the contemporary art collection of the Flemish Community.

This Party Is Over
This Party is Over presents an iceberg sculpted from ice, placed on an otherwise empty banquet table. Over the course of the exhibition, the iceberg gradually melts away completely. The sculpture is in constant transformation and ultimately disappears. With this installation, Gideon Kiefer explores transience and the fading of memories; a recurring thread throughout his oeuvre. The banquet table, typically a site of abundance and consumption, becomes here a sober support for a tragic object. What initially appears massive and stable proves to be temporary and fragile. At the same time, the work explicitly refers to the climate crisis and articulates a critique of the lack of adequate human action to prevent catastrophe. The party is over.

NOKUKHANYA LANGA - ‘nana’ | 14/03 - 12/04/2026

Nokukhanya Langa (1991, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA works and lives i Rotterdam, NL), Langa has grown up living between the United States, India, South Africa, The Netherlands, and Belgium. Her art practice reconciles the pluralities of her personal story, mixed cultural heritage, and lived experiences; all coming together to form part of her large-scale paintings, filled with vibrant imagery in a stream-of-consciousness style.

Unlearning the rigidity of her training in traditional oil painting, she plays with abstract motifs; colour, swirls, and other fluid shapes, working in unison with more recognisable motifs like text and signs. Shifting back and forth between figuration and abstraction, the result is an agile use of approachable jargon and aesthetics that convey the more subtle, and incendiary subtext of the works in a kind of hallucinatory reality. Langa's work has been exhibited at major institutions including, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2020-2021); Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2022) and chi K11 Art Museum in Shanghai, China (2023) and recently in 'Painting after Painting' at S.M.A.K. in Ghent, BE.

Willem Boel - ‘A Well Balanced Painting’ | 18/04 - 10/05

Willem Boel (Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, 1983) bases his practice on the use of industrial structures and objects, stripped of their original function and reconstructed with artistic intent and a rigorous sense of composition. The historical and conceptual weight of these elements, serving as both support and artwork, along with the frequent buildup of paint, creates a density of information and materiality that contrasts in balance with the empty spaces and visual lightness of his pieces. These elements raise questions around disciplinary boundaries and traditional formats. The importance of process as a key component of his work lends significant value to time and duration.

Willem Boel works mainly in series, with notable bodies of work including Le chef d’oeuvre inconnu, De Nieuwe Molens, Pare Feu and Sancho Don’t Care. In 2015, he was awarded the prestigious Grand Prize at the Salon de Montrouge.

Boel had his first solo exhibition, Soon You'll Be Eaten, at BARBÉ in 2023 and in 2025 the gallery showed his monumental sculpture Sancho Don't Care #05 at the Brussels Expo site during Art Brussels. He has exhibited at institutions such as Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Museum M in Leuven, Belgium; and Loods 12 in Wetteren, Belgium. His monumental installation Sancho Don’t Care #05 - an 11-meter-high sculpture is currently touring across Europe, having been shown in Latvia, Denmark, France, and Belgium. In 2021, Boel participated in the Bruges Triennial (Belgium); Artissima (Turin, Italy); Art Rotterdam (Netherlands); Art Brussels (Belgium) and Kunstverein, Peschkenhaus Moers (Germany). His work is collected by the National Bank of Belgium and Museum M (Leuven, Belgium). In September 2025 his solo Memo opened at Hilario Galguera Gallery in Mexico City (MX).

Jens Kothe - ‘Pelvis’- 16/05 - 24/05/2026

Jens Kothe °1985, Lives and works in Bochum and Düsseldorf (DE) Jens Kothe presents tactile wall objects echoing the human body, the physical self. Take for instance the oval round cavities, like navels cut from the belly. As if they were enlarged body parts, Kothe’s objects are executed in muted, fleshy colours and shaped in slightly convex surfaces and soft curves begging to be touched. At the same time they often make you think of familiar elements of everyday life, such as benches. By making use of materials that evoke a certain intimacy, the artist welcomes the viewer into a private atmosphere. Although his works refer to the human body, it is never the human body as a whole. Instead it’s fragmented, degraded even, somehow trapped between its organic origins and the industrial world in which it is supposed to function, thus reflecting the struggle of man against the machine.