Francesco Arena | Nout Bodyn | Willem Boel | Maxime Brigou | Thibault Carlier | Nelleke Cloosterman | Sid Dankers | Thomas Decuypere | Adelheid De Witte | Charlie De Voet | Eva Dixon | Carole Ebtinger | Clem Edwards | Zoro Feigl | Flexboj & LA | Katrien Hoffman | Gideon Kiefer | Jens Kothe | Nokukhanya Langa | Kris Martin | Hilde Overbergh | Joost Pauwaert | Thomas Renwart | Bruno Roels | Lukas Städler | Hammzat Tahabsim | Alice Vanderschoot | Marlon Wobst
10 October - 15 November 2026 | Penitentenstraat 29 & Baudelostraat 23, 9000 Gent
Friends With Benefits begins with a simple invitation. Each artist represented by BARBÉ was asked to invite one artist from outside the gallery to take part in a group exhibition. Rather than building the exhibition around a predetermined theme, Friends With Benefits takes the relationships between artists as its starting point. Each invitation reflects a personal affinity: an admiration for another practice, an ongoing dialogue, a friendship, or simply a curiosity about what might happen when two bodies of work are brought together. The exhibition temporarily opens up the gallery’s programme through the eyes of the artists who are already part of it. In doing so, the usual role of the gallery shifts. The represented artists become, in a way, curators themselves, introducing practices they believe deserve a place alongside their own.
Bringing together recent graduates, emerging, mid-career and established artists, Friends With Benefits does not attempt to define a generation or propose a single shared position. Instead, the exhibition presents a network of individual connections. Some are immediately visible in the works, others less so. What connects them is the gesture of invitation itself. One artist making space for another.
Across BARBÉ’s two locations, these encounters form a temporary constellation of practices, relationships and affinities, extending the gallery beyond its existing programme and allowing new conversations to emerge.
Discover more about The Artists
Adelheid De Witte’s works have become more and more abstract as representation turned out to be too restrictive for De Witte and so figuration disappeared into the background to finally dissolve into cloudy structures and vibrating line figures.
From her research into light and shadow effects as well as colour creation, abstract landscapes emerged in which occasionally elements appear that vaguely recall objects. She pushes the boundaries of the two-dimensional surface further and further away with her often larger-format canvases. The landscape fades out and eventually evaporates. It is up to the viewer to project a landscape in the clouds and the incidence of light.
Contrasting shapes and colours, the confrontation between old and new, West and East intrigue the artist. Sources of inspiration include antique art, pietas, wooden statues of saints condemned to abstraction by the hands of time, paintings from the Romantic period, objects from De Witte’s childhood, prints of Japanese woodcuts and Japanese pattern books. In these Japanese art forms it is mainly the use of two contrasting colours within one monochrome movement that fascinates and inspires the artist.
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Marlon Wobst (1980, Wiesbaden, DE) lives and works in Berlin (DE). Omnipresence of the human figure and “comings and goings” between matter and presence; in this world, as much as a few strokes suffice to give life to a being or even an inanimate object, their absorption or dissolution in the space of the matter often seems imminent. The young German artist offers a sophisticated game of appearance and disappearance, which illustrates the capacity of matter to hold its own narration or even suggest a fluctuating frontier between reality, dream and imagination. Poetry meets humour, as in Getting undressed as much as possible via jumping up and down (Soviel wie möglich ausziehen durch auf- und abhüpfen). All of this is carried by a most refined palette that ranges from a deaf obscurity to pastel tones.
Alice Vanderschoot's love of material and color goes beyond the tactile. Soft, playful, naive, pastel textures become one with architectural, hard, cold metals. The artist is intrigued by the mechanism of things. By what is in, behind and beneath the beautiful sculpture. Scaffolding, fencing and inner workings mostly serve to conceal, support or function, but Vanderschoot brings them radically to the forefront. Two large, pinkish shells represent sensual fertility, love and femininity. Prized for their beauty and magical powers for centuries, shells have served as money, amulets, utensils and ornaments. A whole world is conjured up with one image. Incorporated into this seemingly complex structure become blowing hands. As if by the right action they can open and close. As if something will appear or disappear or suddenly a great shell applause can erupt. The artist creates enchanting illusions by fully integrating hanging systems and pedestals into the sculpture. The illusion of movement, of feather light and leaden, of feminine and masculine, of organic forms and clean lines brings an intense tension and aesthetic dynamism that has a deeper intention besides beauty. Vanderschoot grants a glimpse behind the scenery of life. She not only shows the beautifully lit and polished stage. She also seeks out the wings. The chosen materials and …
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Painting has always been the starting point of Hilde Overbergh’s (1964, Leuven, BE) artistic practice. The kind of painting that challenges and shifts the rules and notions of genres and media. Her artistic method zooms in on the exploration of the transformative possibilities of materials, colours, and shapes. Her work comprises aspects of painting, sculpture, assemblage, and installation. Although Overbergh approaches her work conceptually, what stands out is a great sense of intuition and tactility. Through leaving space for what’s unintentional or unforeseen during the creative process, her art never becomes sterile. The artist uses material to question herself. She reclaims insignificant, everyday objects, unravels and reshapes them into evocative carriers of meaning. She extracts beauty and poetry from humble materials such as foam, plastic waste, pieces of textile, glass shards … Her diverse oeuvre is also capable of holding on to elements of when and where the work was made. Environment and context often have a tangible influence on her artistic output through her search for a connection with social and urban dynamics. By repeating and reworking fragments and works from previous presentations, the artist allows for not only the shape, but also the meaning of her work to stray and change. The meaning of her works accumulates over time, and changes according to their position in space or relation to context. Hilde Overbergh creates dynamic connections and associations between works of art and different presentations, which makes viewers sensitive to perception and experience. Her work exists fully in the present moment, and reflects the commotion and fragility of the world around us.
Carole Ebtinger (1995, VN/FR) works like a painter, building each work layer by layer without knowing in advance when it will be finished. She uses pure ink, pastel and adds a combination of pure pigment, glue and water directly into the paper. Dry pastel is added to refine the vague, nature-inspired forms. The movements and intensity of these shapes reflect the different periods she navigates in life, where emotional awareness becomes an important influence among various personal and contextual forces.
Some titles refer to conversations with loved ones and other social relationships, while others are drawn from literature that speaks to her during the creation process. The emotional freedom she has experienced in recent years is clearly visible in the increasingly expressive gestures that emerge in her recent work. These recent works reveal a newly found, ecstatic sense of freedom and happiness through captivating colours, movement and layered materiality.
Carole Ebtinger graduated with a Masters in Drawing from La Cambre (Brussels, 2018) and was awarded the Eeckman Art Prize by Art on Paper, Brussels (2021). This year she finished her residency at The Fores Project in London (UK) and has had a solo in London (UK) (South Parade in 2023) and Los Angeles (USA) (Sarah Brook gallery in 2023 and 2025). In the past years she also participated in several group shows at BARBÉ and many other venues. In 2025 she had a solo show at BARBÉ ‘Ma Première Extase Était Bleue’ which was her Belgian gallery solo debut.