Sanam Khatibi
Sanam Khatibi
Garden Scene (it is said they are eachother), 2022
oil and pencil on canvas
82 x 118 ins.
210 x 300 cm
Despite the many claims of its death, painting remains a thriving art form. This group exhibition featuring work by 74 artists outlines the medium's recent evolutions and trends in Belgium.
Painting After Painting showcases the work of over seventy contemporary painters. Without striving for completeness, S.M.A.K. attempts to outline the recent developments and trends in the medium. Artists today draw on the motifs and techniques of the past, but equally explore and push the boundaries of the discipline. Some create narrative works addressing their daily lives, political and social issues, or questions of identity, gender and representation. Others adopt a more abstract or formalist language and explore the relationship with other contemporary image-making forms.
Painting After Painting aims to celebrate the depth and complexity of the medium painting. The exhibition is complemented by a richly illustrated catalogue, featuring essays by Dominic van den Boogerd and Tanja Boon. Furthermore, S.M.A.K. will transform Room 1 into a painting studio throughout the exhibition period, offering visitors, including groups and schools, an opportunity to express their own artistic creativity.
Painting after Painting at SMAK Gent (BE), 2025. Photo: Dirk Pauwels
Set in fantastical, utopian landscapes, Sanam Khatibi’s (b. 1979) atemporal and allegorical works showcase primal impulses and unrestrained animality, wherein humans and beasts have little emotional or physical distinction. Khatibi lives and works in Paris, France. She has presented solo exhibitions at Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brazil; the Groeningemuseum, Bruges, Belgium; rodolphe janssen, Brussels, Belgium; Kunsthal Gent, Belgium; and P·P·O·W, New York, NY, among others. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at Centraal Museum, Utrecht, the Netherlands; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium; Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain Occitane, Sète, France; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, France; and Museum of Deinze, Belgium, among others. P·P·O·W presented Khatibi’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, We Wait Until Dark, April 12 - May 11, 2024. Sanam Khatibi: Everything I Don’t Remember, the first international monograph on Khatibi’s work, will be published in Spring 2025.