A LANDSCAPE OF SPIRITS
Antwerp, May 2026
For Belgian artist BRAM DEMUNTER, his practice is a way of navigating worlds shaped by myth, memory, and imagination. His densely layered works bring together ghosts, travellers, animals, and fragments of epic storytelling, drawing equally from Celtic folklore, medieval art, poetry, comics, and contemporary painting. Rather than illustrating fixed narratives, Demunter allows images to emerge intuitively through repetition, destruction, and chance.
These ideas come into focus in Crowded Valley, his latest exhibition at Tim Van Laere Gallery in Antwerp, on view until July 4. Across paintings, watercolour drawings, and bronze sculptures, Demunter explores what he describes as “thin places” — spaces where the boundary between worlds feels porous, populated by spirits, ancestors, and wandering figures.
Here, Demunter reflects on mythology, solitude, ritual, and the enduring need for stories in contemporary life.
Portrait of Bram Demunter, Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp-Rome
The exhibition title suggests density and co-existence. What does Crowded Valley mean to you?
The valley refers to a watercolour painting which is completely filled with ghosts, demons, and ancestors. I see nature itself as an accumulation of tiny elements: swarming insects, stones, rotting wood, and countless branches and leaves. I feel the need to paint each of them individually. In Celtic tradition, people speak of “thin places,” locations in nature where the presence of spirits can be strongly felt. This is something I have focused on intensely in these works.
The circular compositions evoke associations with mandalas, cosmograms, and mythological maps. Were these references consciously present from the beginning, or did they emerge intuitively?
I work on around ten paintings simultaneously. Large and small canvases rotate through the studio like a carousel. I usually begin with an idea that inevitably fails completely. I often destroy large sections of a work before returning with new ideas. Every time I paint over a piece, fragments of the previous image remain, taking on new meanings. Some works emerge effortlessly on their own, while others continue to fail endlessly until I have to start over again. This process is necessary for me. I cannot work from sketches or fixed plans; the paintings need to struggle for a long time before they can unfold through their layers.
References to certain structures arise naturally. A comic strip, a medieval polyptych, or a cosmogram are all ways of telling one or multiple stories within a single image. Because I often work with chance, I do not always know beforehand what the story is about. The painting reveals itself organically.
Left On the top of a mountain, 2025 - 2026, oil on canvas
Right The Collector, 2025 - 2026, oil on canvas
The works feel simultaneously medieval and contemporary. Do you try to merge different historical periods within the image?
There are always many books lying open on the floor of my studio. I constantly look at different subjects, art movements, nature, and poetry from all cultures and periods. Over the past year, my focus has been on demons, spirits, and ancestors. The books scattered around dealt with subjects such as the Kami from Japan, the Draugr from Norway, the Orisha from West Africa, and the Celtic Sidhe, but artists like Twombly, Joan Mitchell, and even Popeye the Sailor Man also influence me.
All of these sources express something similar, which I translate into my own visual language.
Left Portrait of Bram Demunter
Right Dream of a mountain, 2025 - 2026, watercolor, ink, colored pencil and pencil on paper
Do you think contemporary audiences still long for rituals, myths, or spiritual imagery?
I cannot imagine that this has ever been otherwise. We watch films, listen to music, read books and look at paintings in order to feel something. The context of our values and culture changes, but a Romantic painting or a Mesopotamian sculpture can still move us in one way or another. Context is less important than people sometimes think.
The medieval Imram voyages are mentioned as an important source of inspiration. What first attracted you to these stories?
The journey of Brendan of Clonfert, who visits different islands, is a story I have been engaged with for a long time. On each island, the travellers witness something wondrous: a giant talking head, a fish carrying a forest on its back, Judas burning on a rock in the middle of the sea…
For seven years, Brendan revisits the same figures four times a year on fixed feast days, and they always appear unchanged, trapped in the same state. These characters possess something eternal and immutable; their condition seems exactly as it should be, with no possibility of change. For example, there is a hermit who dwells forever on a tiny island.
These stories evoke something deeply visual for me. Every passage could become the image of a painting.
Left The Savior of the Valley, 2025 - 2026, oil on canvas
Right The Dream of the Bear, 2025 - 2026, oil on canvas
Figures such as Dante Alighieri, Odysseus, Gilgamesh, and Dulle Griet seem to echo throughout the work. What connects these characters for you?
The protagonists in the works refer to many heroes from epic poems, paintings, and other forms of media. I use every cliché. They are brave travellers searching for something, figures immersed in deep meditation, or warriors battling dangerous monsters.
The exhibition includes several portraits, among them Gilgamesh. Usually, I draw inspiration from many characters at once: they are simultaneously Achilles, Rama, Beowulf, Rostam, Sun Wukong, and many others.
Left Snag with heads and bird, 2026, bronze, oil paint
Right Sculpture Mountain, 2025 - 2026, oil on canvas
Your figures often appear as travellers, hermits, or witnesses. What interests you about people who withdraw from society?
In this exhibition, there is often a figure surrounded by ghosts or demons. Stories such as Saint Anthony fighting visions of demons alone in the desert are important to me. Gustave Flaubert’s book on Anthony was particularly influential in this regard. Siddhartha, Orestes, and shamanistic stories have also inspired me. These are often figures who isolate themselves and have only their own thoughts to converse with — a bit like a solitary painter.
In your work, mythology appears not as nostalgia, but as an active language. How do myths help you process contemporary reality?
We need stories to understand the world. History itself is also a story about how things more or less unfolded. What matters is the way we tell these stories. Narcissistic world leaders, war, injustice, and fear have existed throughout all ages. The myths of ancient Greece are constantly used to explain contemporary issues, and they are deeply woven into our language. They can be used to generate empathy, but also to spread nonsense.
Left The Blue Head, 2025 - 2026, oil on canvas
Right Conifer with bear and creatures, 2026, bronze, oil paint
This exhibition introduces bronze sculpture into your practice for the first time. Why was this the right moment to move into three-dimensional work?
I have always made small sculptures without feeling the need to exhibit them. I regard a sculpture more as a relic. You can hold it and walk around with it. Only when I began painting them did I feel they could exist within the same world as the paintings. A painting consists largely of imagination, whereas sculptures possess something tangible and real.
The exhibition ‘Crowded Valley’ by Bram Demunter is on view from May 21 to July 4, 2026 at Tim Van Laere, Antwerp
Interview by Martin Onufrowicz