Ongoing

Ongoing is a small-scale presentation about what it means to keep working when certainty is absent. Not as a programme, not as an answer, but as an attitude.

Ongoing

In a context in which positions, structures and expectations are constantly shifting, this presentation does not propose a new narrative. It starts from a simple question: what happens when artists continue to act without knowing what that action will bring?

The exhibition unfolds across two rooms.

In the round room, ongoing appears as searching. Works by Jacqueline Mesmaeker, Guy Van Bossche and Raoul De Keyser show practices that keep trying, resuming and feeling their way forward. The gesture is not completed, the image is not fixed. The circular space supports an open experience in which meaning remains in motion.

In the rectangular room, ongoing takes on a different intensity. Here it is no longer about searching, but about holding on. Works by Bernd Lohaus, Alan Charlton, Marthe Wéry and Charlotte Posenenske show a sustained reduction of form and material. Ann Veronica Janssens makes perception uncertain, Chris Reinecke sets a small but clear boundary. The action no longer changes substantially, but it does not stop either. It remains.

Between the two rooms lies a transitional space. In Olympia by David Claerbout, time unfolds without human intervention. Shilpa Gupta’s Threat, by contrast, activates time through collective action. In this tension between natural duration and social circulation, ongoing is temporarily detached from intention or result. Sound poetry, listened to through headphones, reduces language to voice and breath: listening, too, becomes a form of continuing.

Within the permanent presentation De toestand is vloeibaar, Ongoing functions as a temporary accent. Where the collection shows the mutability of the world, this presentation focuses on an attitude within that mutability.

Not because change is guaranteed.
But because stopping is not an option.

Plan your visit

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Date: 06.06–03.01.2027
Location: Muhka, ground floor
Address: Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerp
Language: Dutch, English and French
Admission: Free admission