28 may 2025, Yves Joris
Revisiting the evening: Tom Woestenborghs between melancholy and mise-en-scène
In the exhibition Life is Performance and Vanity at Rik Rosseels Gallery, scenes are staged that vacillate between fashion, desire and alienation. Artist Tom Woestenborghs has been rearranging the visual language of our time for years. What began as a fascination with the hyper-stylised world of advertisements and glossy magazines has over time evolved into a layered exploration of identity, representation and the tension between private gesture and public posture.
Passers-by hoping to catch a glimpse of Tom Woestenborghs’ new exhibition will be disappointed. An opaque film covers all gallery windows, keeping curious eyes and sunlight out. This has been deliberately done to allow the artist’s work to be experienced to its fullest. After all, his new lightbox pieces are bathed in artificial light that, for me at least, evoke memories of the cinematic mise-en-scènes of Jeff Wall. The illuminated panels act as contemporary icons between sacred imagery and commercial aesthetics. Each work is composed of hundreds of colour fragments with the precision of a collagist, but digitally assembled into photorealistic, almost painterly tableaux vivants.
The woman in the evening
Against that backdrop is the work Reading Position: De Avonden, a title that immediately evokes the literary spirit of Gerard Reve. But even before the content is revealed, the form of the image captures attention.
This time, I would like to highlight a single work that depicts a woman, kneeling on a bright red divan and absorbed in a book. She is wearing a white bodysuit that clings tightly to her body. Her posture is both intimate and charged: not entirely relaxed, not fully posed. Her curls catch the light as if composed specifically for that purpose. The scene suggests domesticity, but the decor—geometrically constructed wall and kaleidoscopic pattern of the floor—betrays a staged reality.
Tom Woestenborghs, rainbox box nr. 3, 2025, Rik Rosseels Gallery
Image as choreography
This is not a moment captured by chance. It is the result of control, stylisation and deliberate choice. Just as Jeff Wall’s documentary gaze turns out to be a cinematic lens, this scene is also composed rather than found. The background, constructed from cube-like gradations in red, white and grey, serves as an abstract plane, a visual echo of an inner world. The floor in turn forms a mental map—fragmented and colourful, elusive yet recognisable. What first appears to be a mundane image of a woman reading gradually reveals itself to be a public presentation. The woman is not simply reading; she has become the personification of reading. Her body, her posture, the taut lines of the interior all reflect tension. This is choreography presenting itself as everydayness.
The spirit of Gerard Reve
The reference to De Avonden by Gerard Reve is far from merely symbolic. In his 1947 debut novel, Reve sketches a stifling portrait of post-war emptiness: ten winter evenings in which the protagonist, Frits van Egters, drags himself through the banality of family life. Very little happens and it is precisely in that nothingness that existential depth lies. The evenings are slow, hushed and laden with silence. Here, too, in the work bearing the same title is a slowness with an undertone. The woman is not in motion. She is in a state. What she is reading is not important; what matters is that she is reading. Or better yet, that she submits herself to the act of reading. In that submission lies a form of surrender, but also an awareness of being watched.
Intimacy as façade
Just as Reve’s characters fill their days with small, meaningless acts that ultimately undermine existence, this scene also takes on a tragicomic grandeur. There is definitely beauty—in the light that glides across her back, in the contrast between the warm reds and the cool geometry—but is also something contrived, something artificial, like the vanity of self-image and performance of daily life. The lightbox as medium intensifies this tension. The internal light produces the image a sacred glow. The woman becomes an icon of an unnamed ritual. The light does not render her a model, but an altar. We do not merely look at her—we look up to her, as if to something both familiar and untouchable.
Tom Woestenborghs, Act of sensibility: shield(ing), 2025, Rik Rosseels Gallery
The gaze as protagonist
The work explores the notion of the gaze: the woman’s gaze on her book and ours as we intrude on this intimacy uninvited. We are witnessing a moment that feels private, but in which privacy proves to be a construct. The woman is not at home, but on stage. And it is precisely in that shift from intimate act to public posture that makes the work so unique. The exhibition’s title Life is Performance and Vanity takes on full meaning in this one image. Life is play, representation, being oneself through what is shown. Vanity here is not an empty term, but a reflective surface on which we recognise our own desires, poses and projections.
Not gone unnoticed
The silence of this work echoes Reve’s tone: that dryly comic, moving voice that seeks meaning in the meaningless, finds beauty in repetition and elevates reading, eating, smoking and silence to metaphysical ritual. This work does not present a narrative, but a state. Not a climax, but a posture. It is an image that looks at us without seeing us. Just as Reve never has his Frits van Egters speak in grand declarations, but rather in small gestures, so too does the artist here show not action, but presence. Reve ends his novel with the words, “It has been seen,” he said softly, “it has not gone unnoticed.” That could well serve as the conclusion here as well, before we stretch out and fall into a deep sleep: this body, this light, this posture, this exhibition—they were seen. They have not gone unnoticed. And the evening—it repeats itself. Again and again.
Tom Woestenborghs, Body culture (D. Buren), 2025, Rik Rosseels Gallery
