A glimpse of the concealed

Some artworks do something to you. They leave you feeling bereft, give you new insights, offer a new way of seeing things, make you happy, hopeful or despairing. This was true in the past, and it remains true today. It is this universal experience that art brings about that is the subject of the exhibition 'Encounters/Ontmoetingen'. KMSKA-curator Paul Vandenbroeck has selected a hundred works from all over the world, from early antiquity to the present day, by well-known and lesser-known artists, from paintings and sculptures to video, installations and textiles. 'Encounters/Ontmoetingen' is not a conventional exhibition. You need no prior knowledge before you walk in. On the contrary, the most important thing is to enter the MAS without preconceptions, and let the art speak for itself. The works are not exhibited according to traditional categories, but grouped into intuitive clusters: sometimes on the basis of aesthetic conventions, sometimes on the basis of a tension between works of diverse origins. The exhibition starts from the notion that art, separately from any idea, thought or belief, has the capacity to touch you, even if you have no idea who the artist is and where the work comes from. To keep the experience pure, there is no text or explanation accompanying the exhibits. All you get as a spectator is the names of the works and the artists. Exhibition: MAS Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium (19.05.-20.08.2017).