Cultural Compass: Singing Red, Crystal Ship's 10th anniversary and drawing meets photography

Every Sunday, Belga English picks its favourite events from the cultural agenda. This week: KMSKA presents colours that sing in an exploration of red, Ostend's open air gallery celebrates 10 years and Museum Dr. Guislain hosts one of the most influential photographers of the 21st century.

Singing Red, until 30 August, KMSKA, Antwerp

What if colours could sing? A Red that Sings invites visitors to experience painting less as image and more as composition, an interplay of rhythm, resonance and emotion.

Bringing together James Ensor, Rik Wouters and Jules Schmalzigaug, the exhibition traces a decisive shift away from Impressionist softness towards bold, unrestrained colour. In Ensor’s The Intrigue, masked figures press into a theatrical space of jarring reds and acidic tones, what he described as “improbable chords of colour”. Wouters, by contrast, works in luminous interiors, where flashes of vermilion quietly guide the eye and intensify feeling. For Schmalzigaug, influenced by Futurism, colour dissolves into movement itself, an “optical polyphony” shaped by speed and sound.

Opening with a work by Peter Paul Rubens, the exhibition situates this explosion of colour within a longer artistic lineage. Yet its focus remains firmly on modernism, presenting these three artists together in a rare and revealing dialogue.

Paintings and drawings are accompanied by audiovisual elements, drawing visitors into a synaesthetic experience where colour is not simply seen, but felt.

KMSKA museum brings Ensor and Wouters together to explore colour as sensory experience

The exhibition “A Red that Sings” opens on Saturday at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA). The exhibition, which runs until the end of...

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The Crystal Ship, runs all year, Ostend

The tenth edition of The Crystal Ship transforms Ostend into a vast open-air gallery, cementing its reputation as one of Europe’s leading street art destinations. This anniversary edition brings together more than twenty international and Belgian artists, adding new large-scale murals to a collection that now exceeds 100 works across the city’s façades.

Curated by Matthias Schoenaerts, the festival creates a dynamic dialogue between muralism, graffiti and contemporary street art. Highlights include contributions from Alexis Diaz, Loomit and JR’s participatory Inside Out Project, inviting residents to become part of the artwork itself.

Beyond the murals, the festival expands into a full city-wide celebration. De Grote Post hosts the inaugural Crystal Ship Summit, while Fort Napoleon presents Subway Art, an immersive exhibition tracing the roots of graffiti culture. A new permanent hub, Thuishaven, further anchors the festival in the city’s creative life.

More than an art event, The Crystal Ship is a celebration of Ostend itself, where urban space, community and creativity converge.

roger ballen.! drawing meets photography, until 13 September, Museum Dr. Guislain, Ghent

At Museum Dr. Guislain, a new exhibition by Roger Ballen unfolds as a disquieting journey into the human psyche. The show brings together black-and-white photographs, films, etchings, Polaroids, colour work and the installation Drawing Man, alongside drawings by unknown artists from Ballen’s own collection.

Ballen, who lives and works in South Africa and is widely considered one of the most influential photographers of the 21st century. Under the motto “drawing meets photography”, he places drawing at the centre of his practice, incorporating both his own sketches and those of his subjects into carefully staged scenes. The result is a distinctive, “Ballenesque” visual language developed over more than fifty years.

Expect birds, rats, bodies, masks and scratched interiors: “The scenes are confusing, recognizable, tangible, absurd, attractive, impossible – yet real.” As the museum notes, this is “a visual world that pulls the viewer beneath the surface… allowing the spectator to balance between reality and fantasy.” An interactive element invites visitors to step inside that world themselves, creating their own scenes with chalk markers and light tables.

​​(MOH)

^{​#FlandersNewsService | The Intrigue by James Ensor © PHOTO ALBUM ARCHIVO}

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