Image: Antoine Roegiers, Le témoin silencieux, 2025, courtesy the artist and Keteleer Gallery
The exhibition marks the 450th anniversary of Roelant Savery’s birth and brings more than 20 masterpieces by the Kortrijk painter into dialogue with contemporary art. It moves from imagined landscapes and abundant animal scenes to endangered species and exhausted ecosystems, presenting the representation of nature as persistent across time and more urgent today.
A central pairing brings Savery into dialogue with the young Kortrijk artist Bram Demunter, two creators of wondrous worlds separated by four centuries. The exhibition also brings together 35 artists from Belgium and abroad, whose works use humour, poetry and challenging questions to reconsider views of plants, animals and landscapes.
In Abby’s chapel, Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz present a spectacular wooden structure that moves continuously through the space like a roller coaster. Its endless movement evokes cycles of decay and renewal, as well as the vulnerability and resilience of societies and ecosystems.
The exhibition takes over the entire museum, extending from the exhibition galleries to the stairwells, café and garden. Abby is partnering with Natuurpunt to plant 1,000 square metres of new forest, approximately 200 trees.
‘After Nature. Beauty and Decay, from Savery to Today’ is curated by Sarah Keymeulen and Thijs Dekeukeleire, with Laurens Mariën as co-curator.
