> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.catapult-platform.art/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Simon Bultynck Keeps the Painting and Loses the Picture - URL: https://www.catapult-platform.art/simon-bultynck-bronze-convent-ghent/ - Published: 2026-10-16T02:52:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-16T02:51:59.000Z - Description: Simon Bultynck at CONVENT in Ghent. Historical landscape paintings reworked in bronze, alongside sculptural objects and scent. Until 25 October 2026. - Author: Dominique Catherina Foertig - Tags: Exhibition, Material & Sculpture, Absence & Form, Sculpture & Installation, Ghent ## CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art Presents Simon Bultynck in Ghent At [**CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art**](https://www.conventartspace.be/current-exhibition?ref=catapult-platform.art) in Ghent, [**Simon Bultynck**](https://simonbultynck.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art) revisits historical landscape painting through bronze, sculptural objects and the familiar scent of a painter's studio. His exhibition A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants is on view through 25 October 2026. **A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants** **Artist:** Simon Bultynck **Exhibition:** A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants **Venue:** [ CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art ](https://www.conventartspace.be/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **City:** Ghent, Belgium **Dates:** 25 September 2026 – 25 October 2026 **Hours:** Friday and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m., or by appointment **Address:** Tennisbaanstraat 74, BE-9000 Ghent **Image Courtesy:** Courtesy the artist Simon Bultynck (b. 1992) brings together painting, sculpture and elements of the artist's studio in an exhibition that explores what remains of a painting when its image is removed. A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants runs from 25 September through 25 October 2026. ![catapult contempoary exhibition submission Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-installation-01.webp) ****Simon Bultynck**, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, installation view with Draped C. Wynants, date unknown, on Showboat Sawhorse, 2025, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. ![Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. White room with a pale green radiator, a white box and cable running across the tiled floor, beside a doorway and a wall opening.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-installation-02.webp) ****Simon Bultynck**, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, installation view, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. The five names are painters whose historical landscape paintings Bultynck has reworked in bronze, stripped of their pictorial surface. The acids he used on fragments of Colin's work have left traces on an easel and on the floor, and a ceramic evaporator filled with stand oil, dammar resin and cedar-vetiver extract fills the room with the smell of oil paint. A bronze sheet draped over an oak sawhorse, two flat works on the floor and two pieces in the courtyard complete the show. Below, Louis De Mey writes to the artist and asks what exactly he takes away from the paintings. ### Exhibition Text by Louis De Mey Dear Simon, In your recent series, you make sculptural reproductions of existing paintings, and I have been wondering for quite some time now what that means. For years I have been fascinated and bewildered by the role assigned to images, the status we grant them, and what images themselves might be capable of producing. ![Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. Two flat dark works on a tiled floor at the right of a white wall with a large rectangular opening.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-installation-03.webp) Simon Bultynck, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, installation view with A. Aubry, 1874, 2026, and A. Oosterlinck, 1931, 2024, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. ![Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. Two flat works on a tiled floor, one matte black and one grey-green on short metal legs, near a white corner.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-work-01.webp) Simon Bultynck, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, detail view of A. Aubry, 1874, 2026, and A. Oosterlinck, 1931, 2024, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. ![Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. White plaster fragments and small metal rods scattered on a tiled floor beside a white skirting board.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-detail-06.webp) Simon Bultynck, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, detail view of the floor, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. Your work restores attention to partially forgotten paintings by not-yet-entirely-forgotten painters. In the same gesture, you also perform a violent act: the images, which in themselves have never been able to move or speak, petrify into metal sculptures in your works. It is not yet entirely clear to me what exactly it is you take away from them. Figuration? In that sense, your reiterations might just as well constitute a great liberation, one that frees them or allows them, at last, real expression. The paint reveals itself as defiant, and you render them even more distinctive. It is precisely here that the images begin to speak again, maybe more expressively than ever. ![Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. Galvanised steel prop with a hook and a rust-brown cylindrical form, seen through an open glass door in a gravel courtyard.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-installation-04.webp) ****Simon Bultynck,** A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, installation view with Propped P. Lippens, date unknown, 2026, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. ![Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. Pale concrete panel with a recessed field and bolt holes on a red brick wall, framed by two concrete columns.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-installation-05.webp) Simon Bultynck, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, installation view with A. Oosterlinck, 1931 (reversed), 2026, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. ![A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. Patch of exposed wall plaster with small holes on a white gallery wall.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-detail-07.webp) Simon Bultynck, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, detail view of the wall, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. At the same time, they are works of art, thoroughly determined by their authors: in this form, by you, and in their original form, by the signatures of others. It is as if you make the original works take place anew, in another guise. I find I can read them both as tender homages and as radical iconoclasm. I'm curious how you see it. Perhaps more fundamentally, it seems to me that you are proposing a récit autorisé, an authorized performance from your own authorial position, superimposed onto the existing paintings. When, and how, does a painting take place? When it lies carelessly resting on a trestle in a workshop?—a nonchalance that you also thoroughly destroy and monumentalise through the precision and polish of the trestle. ![Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. Close-up of two textured bronze panels, one dark green-black and one grey-green, mounted on wooden easel uprights.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-detail-01.webp) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-detail-02.webp) Simon Bultynck, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, detail view of A. Colin, 1927/1929, on Altered Proxy, 2025-2026, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. ![Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. White box with a cable on a pale green radiator, the cable looping down to a tiled floor.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-detail-03.webp) Simon Bultynck, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, detail view of the radiator with ceramic evaporator, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. This question of where and how a painting takes place also enters the exhibition itself. The trestle and the easel refer to precedents such as those of Carlo Scarpa, but above all evoke a surreal studio situation. The acids with which you treated the fragments of Colin's works leave traces on the easel and on the floor. It is somewhat as though they were made here, as though this were a temporary studio. At the same time—and this has always characterized your work—we, the audience, immediately recognize that these traces are staged. ![Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. Close-up of a rust-brown folded cylindrical form](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-detail-04.webp) Simon Bultynck, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, detail view of Propped P. Lippens, date unknown, 2026, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. This scenographic game is pushed further still in this exhibition. The paradox is heightened by the smell of oil paint that fills the room, yet seems to come from nowhere. It brings to mind the painter's studio: its smells, colours, clutter, studies, painting materials. The sculptural brushstrokes now seem to hold the fragrant traces of the mythical space where the paintings once came into being. Fascinated as ever, Louis De Mey 26.03.2026 / 15.09.2026 ![Exhibition review of Simon Bultynck: A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants at CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026. Close-up of a pale concrete panel with a recessed field and bolt holes against red brick.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/10/simon-bultynck-bronze-paintings-convent-ghent-2026-detail-05.webp) Simon Bultynck, A. Aubry, A. Colin, P. Lippens, A. Oosterlinck, C. Wynants, detail view of A. Oosterlinck, 1931 (reversed), 2026, CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. --- **About the Artist** **Simon Bultynck** Simon Bultynck was born in 1992\. His recent series makes sculptural reproductions of existing paintings, here historical landscape paintings reworked in bronze. [Website](https://www.simonbultynck.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art) · [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/simonbultynck/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **About the Location** **CONVENT Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent** CONVENT is a non-profit space for contemporary art at Tennisbaanstraat 74 in Ghent, with a focus on international contemporary art. It aims to complement the programs of the city's other spaces. [Website](https://www.conventartspace.be/?ref=catapult-platform.art) · [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/conventartspaceghent/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **About Catapult Contemporary** This is an exhibition review published by Catapult Contemporary, an independent editorial platform for contemporary art, based in Vienna. We publish exhibition reviews, artist features, interviews, and critical context, with a focus on emerging and mid-career practices from Europe and beyond. 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