Born in Ghent in 1963, Jan Van Imschoot’s works raise questions about the potential of painting. Drawing their power from highly critical and dramatic themes, they create multiple interactions between artistic references, from Tintoret to Luc Tuymans, Goya to Matisse. Imschoot places his figures, decors and narratives at History’s margins, using assembled perspectives, strong tones, bodies in motion and an approach he describes as ‘anarcho-baroque’.

His recurring motifs – freedom and censorship, the violence of political and ideological systems – reveal the anxiety of an artist obsessed with the chaos of the world, convinced that art remains the best weapon in the fight against dictatorship in all its forms. Combining autobiographical references with mythology and memories of Louise Michel, the red virgin, the new works in Le Jugement de Pâris à Bruxelles are being shown for the first time. Jan Imschoot uses them to examine ‘the Belgian trinity, discord between countries, the vanity of peoples and individuals, the experience of feeling threatened.’