Bendt Eyckermans b. 1994, Antwerp, Belgium; lives and works in Antwerp

After graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2016, Bendt Eyckermans quickly gained recognition for his distinctive approach to painting. With a tactile, almost bas-relief materiality enriched by composition, color, and vivid figurative forms, he integrates references to the past with personal experience. Figuration offers Eyckermans a sense of freedom, allowing him to merge formal resonance with scenes drawn from everyday life. He constructs his paintings through composite sketches, letting subtle distortions emerge over time. Figures often appear mid-motion, illuminated by stark lighting that heightens their physical presence while pushing their gestures toward slight, sometimes hard to pin down, exaggeration.

Friends and acquaintances serve as models, their casual stances carefully adjusted to suggest something just beyond the frame. Eyckermans’s scenes are at once quiet and familiar yet charged with an undercurrent of unease. Everyday moments become a foundation for symbolic gestures, where the ordinary and the theatrical converge. His figures feel both intimate and distant, their world immediate yet slightly removed. By sharpening these quotidian moments while deepening their resonance, Eyckermans’s settings ultimately invite reflection on the slippages between seemingly structured and unstructured history.

Bendt Eyckermans (b. 1994, Antwerp, Belgium) lives and works in Antwerp.

The artist’s solo exhibitions include Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2025); Gallery Sofie Van de Velde, Antwerp (2023); Carlos/Ishikawa, London (2023); Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2022); TANK, Shanghai (2022); Gallery Sofie Van de Velde, Antwerp (2019); Carlos/Ishikawa, London (2019); S.M.A.K., Ghent (2018); Kusseneers Gallery, Brussels (2018); Kusseneers Gallery, Brussels (2017); Kusseneers Gallery, Brussels (2016); Park Spoor Noord, Antwerp (2016); Antwerp Tower, Antwerp (2016); Hof ter Biest, Ekeren (2016); Troncaise (2016); Handelsbeurs, Antwerp (2015); Marion de Canniere Gallery, Antwerp (2014);  Galerie van Campen en Rochtus, Antwerp (2013). 

His group exhibitions include S.M.A.K., Ghent (2025, forthcoming); The Perimeter, London (2025, forthcoming); The Campus, Hudson (2024); M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art), Antwerp (2024); Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2021); M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art), Antwerp (2021); Kunstfestival Watou, Watou (2021); CC Mechelen, Mechelen (2018); Plus One, Antwerp (2017). 

Eyckermans’s work is held in the collections of M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art), Antwerp; Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing; and TANK, Shanghai.