Painting after Painting offers a multifaceted exploration of contemporary painting in Belgium, tracing its development from the late 1990s to the present.

Published alongside the exhibition of the same name at S.M.A.K. in Ghent, the book brings together works by 75 artists, including Jan Imschoot, Kati Heck, and Ben Sledsens. It captures the breadth of approaches found in today's painting—from expressive figuration to conceptual strategies—revealing a field that is as diverse as it is vibrant.

Rather than presenting painting as a unified movement, the publication highlights a heterogeneous and evolving landscape shaped by individual gestures, historical references, and critical engagement with the medium itself. The title's phrase “after painting” points not to a conclusion, but to a continual redefinition: painting understood in full awareness of its own history, its presumed obsolescence, and its transformation through cross-disciplinary dialogue.

At its core, the book raises the question of how painting continues to assert itself in a post-medium condition—navigating identity, memory, and social narratives while simultaneously expanding the possibilities of its own visual language. Painting after Painting is less a retrospective survey than a snapshot of a living, questioning, and redefining practice. With works by Charlotte Vandenbroucke, Libasse Ka, Hadassah Emmerich, Tatjana Gerhard, Lisa Vlaemminck, Charline Tyberghein, Lysandre Begijn, Marie Zolamian, Veerle Beckers, Matthieu Ronsse, Bart Stolle, Sarah Smolders, Shirley Villavicencio Pizango, Nelleke Cloosterman, Vedran Kopljar (& parents), Thom Trojanowski, Kati Heck, Anne Van Boxelaere, Antoine Goossens, Frederik Lizen, Bram Demunter, Stijn Cole, Nel Aerts, William Ludwig Lutgens, Carole Vanderlinden, Tina Gillen, Joëlle Dubois, Vincent Geyskens, Felix De Clercq, Dieter Durinck, Kristof Santy, Michaël Van den Abeele, Anastasia Bay, Karel Thienpont, Melissa Gordon, Emmanuelle Quertain, Carlotta Bailly-Borg, Jannis Marwitz, Michiel Ceulers, Victoria Palacios, Leen Voet, Monika Stricker, Anna Zacharoff, Gijs Milius, Che Go Eun, Hannah De Corte, Sanam Khatibi, Nokukhanya Langa, Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Natasja Mabesoone, Julien Meert, Aurélie Gravas, Pieter Vermeersch, Jonas Dehnen, Samuel Hindolo, Loïc Van Zeebroek, Helmut Stallaerts, Adam Leech, Louise Delanghe, Brieuc Dufour, Yann Freichels, Anthony Ngoya, Nina Gross, Jérôme Degive & Manuel Falcata, Koen van den Broek, Mae Dessauvage, Ben Sledsens, Julien Saudubray, Diego Herman, Pieter Jennes, Nelson Louis, Luís Lázaro Matos and Bendt Eyckermans.