Free Opera or Hooverphonic? Five Weekend Tips

Antwerp’s new cultural season is getting under way, and Ben Sledsens is attracting much of the attention. The 35-year-old artist’s new exhibition at Tim Van Laere Gallery has already sold out before its opening.

The show features 30 oil paintings on paper, arranged in three rows of 10. Sledsens made the works over the past two years while also painting on canvas. It is his first time working with oil paint on paper.

“A canvas creates a certain pressure; the spontaneity of paper appealed to me. I found it ideal for experimenting,” Sledsens said. The works show familiar subjects such as a boat, a forest, a vase and a couple, leaving viewers to build their own stories.

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A canvas creates a certain pressure; the spontaneity of paper appealed to me. I found it ideal for experimenting.

The exhibition takes its title, “An Apple for the Road,” from a painting of Sledsens walking through the city with an apple in his hand. “I found it a beautiful, nostalgic image,” he said. “It brings back memories of the past. It sums up my work: an appreciation for the small, the subtle, the ordinary and the beautiful. That is what I try to bring back into art.” The exhibition runs until October 10 at Tim Van Laere Gallery in Antwerp’s Nieuw-Zuid district and is free.

The Vredefeesten in Sint-Niklaas will again feature hot-air balloons. If weather allows, dozens will rise from the Grote Markt, described as the country’s largest square. On Friday evening, the lantern-balloon ballet will illuminate the balloons’ burners to music at 10:30 p.m.

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I found it a beautiful, nostalgic image. It brings back memories of the past. It sums up my work: an appreciation for the small, the subtle, the ordinary and the beautiful. That is what I try to bring back into art.