Visual Artist- Hans Op de Beck
- Sep 20, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 27, 2025
Step into the fascinating world of Hans Op de Beeck, a multidisciplinary artist whose creations span sculpture, installation art, video film, and more. Based in Belgium, Hans has dedicated 25 years to exploring the depths of human emotion and the essence of our existence through his thought-provoking works.
Words Khaya Mnisi
I am a multidisciplinary artist, based in Belgium and I have my artist studio in Brussels. For
about 25 years now I have been active as a professional visual artist, exploring a variety of mediums, such as sculpture, installation art, video film, animation film, large watercolor paintings, theatre texts, stage directing and scenography for theatre and opera and scenography for dance.
The roots of my figurative art practice for sure go back to my days as a kid and teenager when I was deeply into the world of comic books and graphic novels. I was a shy, rather nerdy, unsupportive boy that preferred to draw and stay inside rather than join the other boys to play football… With my talent for drawing, I was able to create a form of identity and a feeling of self-worth; I understood that I had something special going that potentially could shape my destination later in life.
In an interview you had with Anastasia Parmson from The Installation Art Podcast, you mentioned that you are a teacher on the side. How do balance that with working on such captivating projects?
I cherish and value the idea of being a stimulating person to young people who have the courage to choose to become an artist.
Currently I perform a small volume of teaching at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (Belgium), but I have had the pleasure to guide young artist at universities and art schools in many countries: in the US, the UK, France, Germany and throughout the rest of Europe. In an organic, spontaneous way I have made it part of my creative flow, since a good conversation to me potentially is as essential and creative as the intentions and dedication behind a work of art.
Of course, in the most intense studio periods I solely focus on my work and exhibitions.
How would you describe your sculptures to someone who has never seen them?
My sculptural works are a form of figurative fiction, treating all classical subjects: characters, still lifes, landscapes and architecture. I fool around with proportions, perspective and scale and treat all subjects that relate to our human condition; our growing pains, our obstacles, our suffering, hopes and desires, our love and empathy, and, ultimately, our mortality.
I hope that every image I present, displays something that the spectator feels related to, somewhat familiar with, so that there is identification and through that identification with the depicted immersion can take place, emotions and memories may pop up, empathy and understanding, consolation and catharsis may arrive. Most of my sculptures are reduced in the use of color: grey, black and white, or a combination of, say, two or three colors. The ’skin’ of my sculptures is very mat, velvet like, capturing light and obscurity in a soft and tender way. My sculptures, installations, nor my watercolors or movies are about simulating reality, but about revealing what’s underneath the skin of reality.
Can you walk us through your process for creating ‘Nocturnal Journey’? How long do it take, and what were some of the key challenges you overcame?
The works in ’Nocturnal Journey’ are 30 recent works plus 10 new ones, that, all together, are presented as a whole, as a kind of nocturnal park with bare trees and meandering paths. On certain locations within that evocation of that park, the spectator is invited to sit down on sculpted seats, to calmly breathe in the atmosphere.
The sculptures vary in size, from a rather small bas-relief painting to a fully life-sized merry-go-round. All together it took about 4 or 5 years for the whole ensemble, and several weeks to install them as a Gesamtkunstwerk at the museum. I combined all kinds of sculptures that, in their appearance and aesthetic, could easily blend into a whole. The show explicitly is not a retrospective -which I have done regularly elsewhere over the years-, but one large three dimensional installation, an experience, a mildly alienating place, without any text, titles or textual explanation displayed in the space. This body of works is compiled on intuition and through free association, much rather than that I’d have any logic legitimation for it. I love to take that liberty, mixing high and low cultural references, refined aesthetics mixed with strange subcultural references, banalities with gems… anachronistically and eclectically.
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I’m curious – what techniques and materials do you use to create your sculptures?
Many sculptures in the show in Antwerp, like the village on poles, still lifes or landscapes are directly sculpted in for example wood or metal. Most of the works of human beings and animals though are combinations of sculpting and life-cast on the models’ bodies and on props, for example on hands, on feet or shoes, or on pieces of furniture. For things that are close to impossible to sculpt, such as thin feathers or complicated renaissance puzzle balls, we make three dimensional drawings on computer and have those parts milled or printed. The original finished sculpture in general gets sanded to a slick finish so we then can make a mold overall to monolithically pour it in one material: (reenforced) polyester in general. To finish the sculptures, we give the whole a special coating of layers of paint and texture to give them that soft, velvety appearance.
Most of your sculptures are grey. What attracts you in this finishing?
The soft grey tone makes the sculptures appear as if they were petrified, silenced down, fossilized, or covered under a gentle layer of dust or ashes. This gives them a kind of out-of-time appearance, a form of abstraction that creates a reflective, internalized aura to the depicted. In many of my art films and theatre and opera work I have used more colors, but in sculpture I tend to reduce the use of color to create a tranquility and serenity that differs from the direct mimesis and imitation of the actual world, which, to me, is less interesting than interpreting reality in a way that it can discreetly and suggestively open paths to poetry and mystery.
Thinking about your journey so far as an artist, what have been your greatest achievements?
To be honest, achievements are not one’s merit. I believe a talent and a sense for dedication are a given thing. My greatest achievement in life for sure is that I somehow managed to have a lovely bond with my kids. Apart from that, there indeed have been moments in my life in the arts that I truly cherish.
There have been prestigious moments such as when my movie ’Staging Silence (3)’ was shown at Tate Modern in London, or its predecessor at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC.
There was that moment my first monumental 240 m2 work ‘Location (5)’ got permanently installed at the Towada Art center in Japan in its own pavilion, or my permanent installation ‘The Collector’s House’ (of the same monumental size, in a new building specially constructed for the work) that my team and I recently permanently installed at the Kunstdepot Göschenen in Switzerland.
There was the memorable time when I had the privilege to being a resident at the MoMA PS1 Studio Program in New York, or the exchange I was honored to have over the years with some of the great contemporary artists of our time. There was my first own theatre play ’Nach dem Fest’, which I wrote and directed and for which I created the stage design (scenography), costumes, music and light for Schauspiel Frankfurt. Or the movie ‘Dance’ I created with 800 volunteering extras for the Red Star Line Museum, a most moving and humbling experience of sharing.
But for sure, most of all, I am most grateful for so many lovely moments of a warm reception by the audience and press, as is the case with my show at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.
Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists. What is your advice?
The key is: full dedication in the very first place. And then as little distraction as possible and a most profound love for the playfulness and joy of creation. You can’t be an artist for a 50%; it needs to be 110% so to say. Art should feel like a calling, with all the sacrifices and full-on concentration and passion that comes with it. If you are willing to give all you can, if you focus on the creation itself and not on all the distracting noise that surrounds the art world, people will find you and support you, and you’ll find your audience.
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