GHENT.- From October 18, 2025 to March 8, 2026, S.M.A.K. presents the first museum solo exhibition by Belgian artist Marc De Blieck. Entitled Point de voir, the exhibition brings together various series of photographs from the past 25 years.

Marc De Blieck (b. 1958, Sint-Niklaas, Belgium) questions the expectation that a photographer must communicate a particular insight or viewpoint. He challenges the viewer by disrupting the link between point of view as physical position and point of view as opinion. The exhibition’s title refers to the concept of point de voir (point of seeing), a term coined by the French pedagogue, philosopher, writer, filmmaker, and artist Fernand Deligny. Unlike a point de vue (viewpoint), a 'point of seeing' is imaginary. It cannot, therefore, be taken or occupied.

Although his images don’t make statements about the world they depict, they are neither vague nor merely suggestive. Instead, De Blieck concentrates on what makes photography unique: its extraordinary sharpness and capacity for detail.

His images invite us to look closely. Though there is much to see, they withhold immediate clarity: something stubbornly resists. De Blieck breaks through our habitual ways of seeing, among other things through the camera’s wide field of vision, exceeding that of the human eye, and through his play with colour, format, and printing techniques.

With this exhibition, S.M.A.K. wishes to highlight an important oeuvre that has long remained in the shadows.

The exhibition is composed of seven series of works:

B-sites (2000)

Around the turn of the millennium, architect Wim Cuyvers visited multiple car parks along Belgian motorways. He noted the parameters of how these sites, once limited to petrol stations or stops for a picnic or toilet break, had developed into meeting places for quick and anonymous sex. They became a model for the place beside the stream, a place to be filled in. Every user seeks its own position there, according to their needs. Each use leaves specific traces behind. At Cuyvers' invitation, Marc De Blieck joined this project. When determining the position from which the photographs for this series were taken, he was guided by the ‘needs’ of the camera, and the traces of this are contained in the resulting images. The photographs were made with an 8 × 10” technical camera on a tripod. These are contact prints on gelatin silver baryta paper, produced from the negatives.

Pixels (2002 onwards)

These paintings are interpretations of a score based on the Fibonacci sequence, supplemented by opaque yet strict rules. The way the paintings were created, is comparable to the workings of a photographic device: a combination of operational algorithms and inscrutable dark chambers, through which pixels are arranged on a flat plane. The paintings depict neither visible reality nor algorithms. They do not offer a path to their origin. With the exception of one printed image, the works are executed either in oil on canvas or ink on paper.

Save as Image (2007 – 2018)

Save as Image is a series of photographs taken in museums and at UNESCO World Heritage sites. With the exhibits at such sites as a subject, the camera focuses on objects that have been certified as ‘very valuable’ or ‘universally valuable’ by committees or specialists. Here, the camera is not an explorer of unknown territory. It depicts things that have long been depicted, many times over. Save as Image is an exercise in questioning who or what is “speaking” in the photographs, and a reflection on the legitimacy of that speech. The photographs were taken with a monochrome technical camera on a tripod as well as with small digital cameras, and printed with monochrome ink on various media.

Kassel Kontrapunkt (2015 – 2021)

In the margins of Save as Image, a series of works evolved in and around Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, a domain in the ‘Documenta city’ of Kassel. Bergpark’s landscaped grounds have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013. The photographs are made with the sun in the back, using small digital cameras with a fixed focal length, and printed with carbon ink on washi paper. The placement of the images in the page layout varies according to a predetermined rule, as do the lines along which the paper is folded.

Traces (2020 – 2022)
A camera cannot read. The traces it leaves behind do not form text. Traces is a small group of images that laid the foundation for the series Affirmations. The photographs were taken with a modified digital camera on a tripod and printed with monochrome ink on washi paper, then cut, glued, and folded.

Affirmations (2022 onwards)
Affirmations might refer to a set of divination cards, to affirmative philosophy, or to the fact that photographs cannot express negation. This collection of recent images does not adhere to a consciously chosen programme. The photographs are not underpinned by a predetermined strategy, but neither are they snapshots: taken with a digital camera on a tripod, they underwent typical image processing before being printed with pigment ink on sheets of washi paper. They were then glued together and folded.

Point de voir (2022 onwards)

In the lead-up to this exhibition, Tanja Boon, one of the curators at S.M.A.K., compiled a list of the people who, each in their own way, support the museum. Individual conversations were then woven into a polyphonic narrative. Guided by this, waterfalls were recorded, using a digital camera, a 35mm lens, and a tripod. These photographs are composites made from multiple exposures, some short and some long. The result is an image in which water appears both as a flowing stream and as individual drops. The shots were printed onto washi paper, folded to a convenient size. These images were initially created in response to the conversations, which is the source of their meaning. The final image is not an illustration of those conversations. The very fact that there was a recipient (and thus a question) was enough to trigger the process of image-making. In this exhibition, they have been freed from the intimate exchanges out of which they arose. They are vacant.