From September 20 till November 23 2025
The exhibition of Dr. Hugo Heyrman | A Sense of Transparency runs from September 20 to November 23, 2025. The opening will take place on Saturday, September 20, from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm. The book of the same name and its bibliophile edition will also be presented.
Dr. Hugo Heyrman, painter, pioneer in happenings, film experiments, net.art and intermedia.
A Sense of Transparency
— Faces & Traces Studies
— Horse Power Studies
Cinematic sequences
The paintings and works on paper pictorially express the question of how we construct and perceive reality. The ‘now’ moment is expanded into a cinematic sequence of relationships between potential thought-images — from worldview to the visionary ‘not yet’.
Transparency vs mystery
With A Sense of Transparency, Heyrman demonstrates the sensory power of painting and explores the universal mystery of reality. What takes precedence is the profound connection between lived experience and emotional resonances, such as existential vulnerability, loneliness, longing, and unknown expectations. Painting has a liberating effect — the viewer completes the work.
Temporality is the structuring of experience
In Heyrman's work, the mystery of reality is present as an intense ‘now’ experience. A space emerges where linear time becomes nonlinear. With a nomadic gaze, he gives evocative moments an unseen dimension of temporality.
Time is the element in which we exist
The works evoke an ambiguous tension between presence and absence. In 1974, when Heyrman (as a conceptual artist) resolutely chose for painting as medium, he became an early pioneer in the great revival of painting.
Click here for past expositions of Dr. Hugo Heyrman
From 17 September till 5 November 2023
The exhibition of Dr. Hugo Heyrman | De poreuze grenzen van de realiteit runs from Sunday 17 September until Sunday 5 November 2023. The opening will be on Saturday 16 November from 11 am till 9 pm.
Dr. Hugo Heyrman, painter, pioneer in net.art and intermedia.
The Porous Boundaries of Reality
A central theme for Heyrman is his existential involvement with the fragility of the contemporary living environment: the city and street as a form of society, in which a contemplative meaning emerges, in the body language of human emotions, attitudes and gestures. The power and impact of painting as a medium is partly based on the fact that it is a unique, ambiguous, non-verbal, manual, direct, silent, static and intimate form of art.
The image as medium
Artist dr. Hugo Heyrman positions himself within the art world at a remarkable level. When we survey his artistry of more than half a century, we are confronted with an oeuvre that has continuously fulfilled a pioneering function. Heyrman’s oeuvre is a unique contribution to painting. Each new canvas is an experimental experience in the use of painterly fiction and freedom. The artistic adventure shows itself in the overlap of reality, memory and imagination.
A Reflective Perspective
Heyrman’s works are reflections of an individual consciousness. They show how the medium is the message: the internal relations, the interplay between things. They give an ‘intermedia’ perspective to the media themselves. The painted images are sensible crossovers, reconnecting us with the mystery of ‘reality’.
The Intensification of the Gaze
What we see is the ‘punctum’ of the deeper social layer of an image, how images appear and disappear: an intense presence of temporality and atmosphere, the dynamics of day and night, of light, perspective, reflections, shadows, traces, the surface, the skin, the colors and gradations of a kaleidoscopic gaze and thinking. In the works Heyrman simultaneously exposes the underlying power structures of the city, the codes and systems.
Click here for past expositions of Dr. Hugo Heyrman
This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition The Porous Boundaries of Reality of Dr. Hugo Heyrman in Galerie De Zwarte Panter, Antwerp, 16 September till 5 November 2023. The text is written by Joannes Késenne, the design is made by Thomas Soete. The book is published by Hannibal.
A boxed collector’s edition has also been published, including an original work by Dr. Hugo Heyrman with 15 copies, numbered 1 to 15, by de Vrienden van De Zwarte Panter, Antwerp.
Price for the boxed collector’s edition: 700 euro, please pay on account IBAN: BE96 0682 0095 2705 Of de Vrienden van De Zwarte Panter. The custom edition is available during the exhibition and in quality bookshops at 49,95 euro, shipping not included
