~ in het midden ~ brings together the work of Robin Vermeersch and Ruth van Haren Noman through a shared intuitive approach. Their images do not emerge from analysis or a rigid plan, but from an inner necessity — a movement from within outward.

Both artists share an approach in which the work does not strictly follow a preconceived scheme, but instead evolves through the act of making. Color and an organic visual language are central to this process. In the spatial reliefs and drawings of Robin Vermeersch, as well as in the paintings and watercolors of Ruth van Haren Noman, a world of images takes shape like a living organism, guided by its own internal logic.

~ in het midden ~ marks the point where inside meets outside, where impressions of the world are transformed into form, color and matter, allowing the artwork to evolve into an autonomous presence in space.

Robin Vermeersch (°1977) works across various media. Sculptures, paintings and drawings reveal a cellular existential world that can also be experienced on a cosmic scale. His works function both as autonomous objects and as parts of a larger estranging universe in which they give meaning to one another.

Vermeersch subtly refers to reality without representing it realistically. The recognizable is dismantled, enlarged and reassembled into something new. Fascinated by what lies hidden within the folds of our limited vision he creates from fragments an alternative world in which the essence of existing reality is concealed. The strange feels at once familiar and invites the viewer to reconsider their perception.

Essential to his oeuvre is the idea that each artwork forms a new life. It is not a static representation but an organism with its own logic and dynamics. From a clear inner idea the works grow organically and intuitively, branching and expanding until they almost exceed their own boundaries.

In the exhibition Vermeersch presents a series of reliefs based on motifs that frequently recur in his oeuvre. These are personal signs inspired by Egyptian reliefs and cuneiform writing. The concrete structures are partly inspired by the deep reliefs in the architecture of Le Corbusier. They are spatial paintings in which oil paint is used as an accent. Rough concrete meets the softer materials of oil paint, epoxy and wax, creating a tension between hard and soft, heavy and playful, massive and vulnerable.

The slowly growing yet living oeuvre of Ruth van Haren Noman (°1975) consists primarily of oil paintings created in a studio that resembles a cabinet of curiosities, a refuge populated by carefully displayed collections of shells, stones, seed pods, colored fragments of glass and other curiosities that enter into dialogue with one another.*

In her paintings a poetic universe emerges, a mental hortus conclusus, an enclosed world inhabited by strange yet familiar beings. They move through indeterminate spaces without fixed points of reference, no horizon, no foothold. Sometimes they appear as abstract fields of energy that seem to communicate with one another, at other times as cross sections of plants or enlargements of invisible microscopic life. Her work arises through a delicate and intuitive interplay of color and line. Nature forms her guide and source of inspiration. She does not depict it but departs from a deep connection to its cyclical essence in which everything appears and disappears again. Just as the objects in her studio enter into silent dialogue subtle relationships and shifts also emerge on the canvas.**

Her images resist easy categorization. They require time and an open gaze. They appear like riddles without menace, rich in forms and colors that lead the viewer into a parallel universe, not entirely unknown but shifted in meaning. She once began by painting flowers yet her disarming intuitive approach transcends the naive and reveals a deeper reality.

The paintings invite us to look and to experience differently. The titles too form an integral part of the work. Like a name given at birth they conclude the painting process without seeking to explain the image. In that other universe language may sound familiar yet its meaning shifts. Therefore here too let imagination do its work.


* Fragment from the artist publication ‘The Bear and the Butterfly’, text by Ruth van Haren Noman, 2024
** Fragment from a text by Tinus Vermeersch for the exhibition ‘Vreemde wezens’, 2025