Open M gives visual artists with a link to the wider region of Leuven the opportunity to show their work in the museum galleries. Guest curator Brenda Guesnet selected the presented works out of 390 open call submissions.The exhibition brings together twelve artists whose works are rooted in their everyday surroundings. They transform ordinary objects and situations into extraordinary artworks that speak to the more fundamental, profound, and mysterious aspects of life.
Mousetraps, supermarket receipts, crooked nails, and empty driveways transcend their banality and provoke contemplation of the subtle nuances and hidden depths embedded in the fabric of daily life. The environments we encounter in these works have murky borders and are resistant to cliché: they are domestic, but not cosy; urban, but not cosmopolitan; rural, but not pastoral.
Artists Koen Barra, Eva Claus, Arthur Cordier, An Devroe, Hanne Geerinckx and Irma Maria Marcel Janssens speak to the ways in which the marginal shapes individual and communal identity. They take an analytical approach, elevating commonly overlooked objects and imbuing them with meaning. Maaike Beckx, Sigurrós G. Björnsdóttir, Bart Hendrickx, Katelijne Laroy, Carla Meertens and Delphine Somers incorporate fantastical elements into the quotidian to create new dream-like worlds.
Just like this exhibition is an invitation to meet lesser-known artists with a connection to the wider region of Leuven, the artworksinvite all of us to make new discoveries without venturing far from our own doorstep.
I’m delighted to be working with twelve exceptional artists for Open M, whose diverse practices are brought together in an exhibition entitled ‘Hidden in plain sight’. These artists highlight and transform the marginal, leading the audience towards something unexpected. The exhibition speaks to the specificity of living and working in this region and invites the public to experience their own environment – and perhaps the museum itself – anew.
Brenda Guesnet
Guest curator
Open call
Via an open call, artists with a link to Leuven were invited to submit their work for a group exhibition. Every edition of Open M has a different theme. M received 390 submissions this year.
Guest curator
Brenda Guesnet (b. 1993, Bad Soden am Taunus, Germany) is the curator and deputy director of IKOB – Museum of Contemporary Art in Eupen, in the German-speaking community of Belgium. She took up her post in 2021.
At IKOB, she has curated solo exhibitions by Kristina Benjocki, Marcin Dudek, Veronika Eberhart, Alexandra Tretter and Helen Anna Flanagan, among others, as well as the group exhibitions ‘All our Yesterdays’ and the IKOB – Feminist Art Prize. She also coordinates the museum's public and educational programmes.
Guesnet worked in the artist liaison department at White Cube (2017-2020) and as a curatorial assistant at Tenderpixel Gallery (2016-17), both in London, after completing an MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London (2015-17). She has been realising independent curatorial and writing projects since 2015, often as part of the collective ANGL. She is co-founder of celador, a project space in Brussels.
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