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Atelier ouvert : Around Arié Mandelbaum

  • Exhibitions
  • Free
With Atelier Ouvert, the Jewish Museum of Belgium extends the exhibition beyond its walls into the surrounding neighbourhood. While the museum building is closed for renovation, around ten paintings by Arié Mandelbaum are presented in venues within walking distance of the museum. Shown in a variety of settings, they engage with new audiences and new contexts.

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These displacements create unexpected correspondences, tensions and affinities, allowing the works to resonate beyond the conventional exhibition space and into everyday life.

Born in 1939, Arié Mandelbaum grew up in a Jewish family of Polish origin near Brussels South Station. He created the greater part of his oeuvre in Brussels, where he established and relocated his studios over the decades. Since the late 1950s, his paintings have woven together collective history, political commitment and personal experience. Over time, his visual language has become increasingly distilled, placing traces, erasure and memory at its centre. Fragile figures, overlooked histories and the violence of history emerge in compositions where white is not an absence, but an active force.

The exhibition unfolds across CINEMATEK, Cinéma Galeries, the Maison des Arts et de la Culture Sociale (MACS – Grands Carmes), the Bruegel Cultural Centre, the Brussels Public Social Welfare Centre (CPAS), Maison CFC, Théâtre des Tanneurs and the Jewish Museum of Belgium. Guided tours, public conversations, film screenings and encounters with the artist will accompany the project, extending the resonances the works generate as they move from one place to another.