Exhibition: “The In-Between”

24/10/2026 - 09/01/2027

Luc Claus & Johan Heylen

Luc Claus - Zonder titel - 2002

Johan Heylen - Tussenruimte - 2026

The In-Between

The exhibition The In-Between brings together two bodies of work that emerged from very different backgrounds. Yet, they are closely related in their inner atmosphere. Luc Claus, the draughtsman, and Johan Heylen, the painter, speak a common language.

It is the language of the in-between: between appearance and disappearance, doubt and faith, form and dissolution, the visible and what cannot be named. For Johan Heylen, the in-between is explicitly linked to an existential quest. It refers to that fragile zone where meaning dissolves, where being and non-being touch, where the self recedes to allow something greater to come through. Painting becomes the site of an inner, almost mystical experience.

For Luc Claus, the in-between manifests itself differently. It resides in the very nature of drawing: a work that is both finished and still open, a form born from a gesture yet still marked by hesitation, a figure at once present and elusive. His heads, plinths and silent silhouettes never fully reveal their meaning. They remain suspended, as though they were still emerging before our eyes.

The In-Between is not a confrontation between two artists, but rather a meditation in two voices on the act of creation itself. The exhibition shows that art is often born in uncertainty, in the place where answers are lacking but where something is starting to show. Claus’s line and Heylen’s painterly material deal with doubt in the same way: far from being a flaw, hesitation stimulates attention, presence and creation.

But the affinity goes further. Luc Claus was a friend of Johan Heylen’s family, and his work has been an important source of inspiration for Heylen. The affinities run deep: the same love of silence, the same distrust of explanation, the same attention to the invisible, to mystery and to the human condition.

At the Adornes Estate, this dialogue finds a special resonance. The Jerusalem Chapel, the almshouses, the presence of the sacred and the sense of the long term provide these works with a space in which they can breathe.