DIFFERENCES opens on Thursday September 9, 18:00 > 23:00 on the occasion of Brussels Gallery Weekend and will remain open that weekend Friday September 10 till Sunday September 12, 11:00 > 19:00.
Afterwards, the exhibition will be open from September 16 till October 3, from Thursday till Sunday, 11:00 > 18:00.
Gosset Site, Building A (first floor)
Rue Gabrielle Petitstraat 4-6, 1080 Brussels

The first edition in the series of HISK alumni exhibitions is entitled DIFFERENCES. It stands, simply put, for a particular aspect of the mission of the HISK: to provide young visual artists with a context in which they can further develop their individuality, in confrontation with a variety of experts from the art world. The HISK offers advanced higher education, but it is not a school in the scholastic sense, nor is it prescriptive or bent on rules. On the contrary, de-regulation seems to be its educational principle of choice. Nor is the HISK a school in the sense that it stands for a set of characteristics shared by a group of artists and used as a denominator under which they present themselves. To be a HISK alumnus implies that one has been admitted by an expert jury of international standing and has completed a two-year process. It does not refer to any type of art, to one particular understanding of what art should be, but to a variety of concepts of what might be called quality.

HISK Chairman Willem Elias is acting as curator for DIFFERENCES. He chose one artist per graduation year, twenty-four in total. Not the best in the class. After all, the HISK is a quality label. However, in each case, an artist for whom being different in his relationship with others seemed relevant. In this sense, not an exhibition centred on a conciliatory unifying theme or formal quality. But rather one that places the emphasis on what constitutes the difference.

Participating artists: Beatrijs Lauwaert (HISK laureate 1997), Stéphanie Leblon (HISK laureate 1998), Tina Gillen (HISK laureate 1999), Wim Catrysse (HISK laureate 2000), Caroline Coolen (HISK laureate 2001), Fanny Zaman (HISK laureate 2002), Bart Stolle (HISK laureate 2003), Stephan Balleux (HISK laureate 2004), Stefaan Dheedene (HISK laureate 2005), Ruben Bellinkx (HISK laureate 2006), Leon Vranken (HISK laureate 2007), Michiel Alberts (HISK laureate 2008), Ermias Kifleyesus (HISK laureate 2009), Rinus Vandevelde (HISK laureate 2010), Karl Philips (HISK laureate 2011), Odilon Pain (HISK laureate 2012), Ben Van den Berghe (HISK laureate 2013) & Alexey Shlyk, Birde Vanheerswynghels (HISK laureate 2014), Emmanuel Van der Auwera (HISK laureate 2015), Lydia Hannah Debeer (HISK laureate 2016), Pepa Ivanova (HISK laureate 2017), Mostafa Saifi Rahmouni (HISK laureate 2018), Lisette de Greeuw (HISK laureate 2019), Štefan Papčo (HISK laureate 2020)

Read about the exhibition Differences in Metropolis M here.