Joost Pauwaert 

BIO | SELECTED WORKS | CV

Joost Pauwaert (1985, Bretzenheim, DE) ’s work explores the relationship between power, beauty, and poetry, often infused with a playful, childlike curiosity. He integrates familiar and symbolic imagery that evokes both recognition and tension. Pauwaert is drawn to the aesthetic of the imposing and the monumental, balancing this with a sense of the caricatural and symbolic wonder that softens its intensity and opens up imaginative possibilities.

Joost Pauwaert lives and works in Wilrijk, BE. In recent years, his work has been presented in numerous exhibitions, including solo and group shows at BARBÉ and other venues such as Ooidonk Art Festival, C-mine (Genk), Art Brussels (with Dauwens & Beernaert), Art Cologne (with Galerie Eric Mouchet, FR), Archipel at Deweer Gallery Estate (Otegem), Art Rotterdam (with BARBÉ), Ponti (Antwerp), Pizza Gallery (Antwerp), Gevaertsdreef (Oudenaarde), PASS Kunstroute (Lede), and Emergent (Veurne). Following his second solo exhibition, The End Is Near (2024), accompanied by the performance Apocalyptic Triumph Parade, one of the sculptures was acquired by the Museum of Deinze and the Leie Region. He also participated in the debut exhibition of ABBY Kortrijk, where he performed Apocalyptic Carousel in September 2025. In 2026, Pauwaert was invited by curator Simon Delobel for a solo exhibition, A Good Hammering, at KIOSK (Ghent, BE), presenting an immersive installation that reflects his evolving practice of recent years. In the summer of 2026, he will presented a solo exhibition at Park Ter Beuken, invited by the city of Lokeren.

More information about his solo ‘The End Is Near’ (2024)

Joost Pauwaert’s performance ‘Hard Rain’at Park Ter Beuken,Lokeren , Belgium.

Joost Pauwaert’s performance 'Apocalyptic Triumph Parade'

Executed on 26 October 2024 from 16.00 - 16.45 through the historic city center of Ghent, Belgium. HR video, 08min06se

Joost Pauwaert’s performance ‘A new study for an end of the world’ - Homage to Jean Tinguely.

The performance was executed on Sunday August 14th 2022 at 21.00 in front of an audience in Beernem, Belgium.

The artistic beauty of these ventures derives from the originality of the questions, on the opposite side of the usual forms of artistic expression.
Actually, they precede and take us back to times when science and art were closer to each other than today. Or they lead us back to fundamental questions in sculpture, which always had to do with gravity and density.

Here we come closer to a fundamental poetry, which stems from the beauty of things themselves.

(text by Hans Theys)