Thomas Renwart - The Thieving Magpie

15 March - 20 April 2025
Baudelostraat, 9000 Gent - BE

more info: desk@barbegallery.be

Thomas Renwart (°1995) graduated in 2019 at LUCA School of Arts gaining his masters in Textiles. His textile practice meets constantly in between crafts-ship and poetic depictions of a horticultural universe. Starting with written matter, a world is built around it, carefully translated into tactile matter.

Thomas Renwart has yet participated in several gallery and insitutional exhibitions in Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany and USA. In 2020 he had a solo at Kunsthal Gent ‘Gilding The Lily’ which was followed with a large installation as part of the ‘Endless Exhibition’. In 2021 the artist was laureate of the Dorothy Waxman Prize 2021 by Parsons (NY ,USA) and also won two Henry Van De Velde award for his work as a textile artist. In the same year his artist book ‘Comme si de rien n'était: Catalogue & Cahier Intime’ was published by MER. B&L. In the beginning 2022 he had a solo in the Europe House (London, UK) by invitation of the Belgian Embassy and later that year the Flemish government acquired a work for the collection of the Flemish Community which is given on loan to the Mu.Zee collection in Ostend. In 2023 he has his first solo show ‘Highway Vagabond’ at Barbé gallery followed by a solo at Kunsthalle Lissabon in December 2023. In 2024 he had a solo at Thomas Rehbein (Cologne, DE) in 2024 followed by a group show at Stedelijk Museum Aarschot. In 2025 he will show work in the inaugural exhibition at the ABBY Museum in Kortrijk.

Download the full CV here

Exhibition text:

Sonically, Rossini sought to capture the image of a thieving magpie in his melodramatic opera’s overture. Magpies—exceptionally clever and ingenious birds—are evoked through the speed and cunning conveyed by the orchestra’s many instruments.

During his daily train journeys as a conductor for the Belgian railways, Thomas Renwart developed a fascination and deep love for birdwatching. He observes these small, feathered encounters—creatures with an independent world and remarkable ingenuity—during their fleeting appearances. This happened at a time when the artist himself was searching for the essence of his practice: needle and thread.

He learned to sew with a machine at the age of thirteen, and this year marks his fifteenth anniversary in stitch and spool. A series of quilts emerged from his readings on the many myths, superstitions, and folklore that people have linked to birds throughout history. The magpie, an eternal thief. The dove, an eternal symbol of hope. The list is long.

The quilting technique Renwart employs originates from the American Civil War era. With minimal materials and a raw, almost childlike honesty—once considered primitive and folkloric—he appliqués the forms of birds and objects onto a natural base: pure, unbleached, and untouched cotton. These are love letters to the beauty of simplicity in an ever more complex world.