BRUSSELS.- The spaces at Galerie Templon are taking on a baroque tinge with the first Brussels exhibition of artist Franz Ackermann. Following on from his Paris exhibition in 2016 exploring international metropolises, Our Houses draws on the European capital's energy and transforms the gallery space with a combination of mural paintings, imposing oils on canvas, a sculpture and a series of small format works on the city of Brussels.

Over the last twenty years, Franz Ackermann has created a body of work that draws on his personal experience of travel and of his encounter with architecture and the urban space. His mental maps use a mixture of sensations and memories of the global cities he has explored. They then feed into his installations and large, vivid paintings where architectural constructions and organic rhythms meet. With Our Houses , Ackermann tackles the realm of the intimate. The house, both a physical and mental object, a metaphor for the individual and her/his aspirations and relationship with the world, contends with a hallucinatory vision of today's urban realities. Behind the exuberance of the works, this encounter between the private and the global subtly questions the wariness of our European societies, where the sense of hospitality and sharing is vanishing.

Born in 1963, Franz Ackermann lives and works in Berlin and Karlsruhe. Over the last 20 years, he has taken part in numerous major group exhibitions in Europe, the USA and Japan, including: 2018, Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany; 2017, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA; 2016, Pinacoteca de Sao Paolo, Brazil; 2009, Tate Triennial, London, UK; 2009, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, USA; 2006, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany; 2005, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; 2005, MoMA, New York, USA; 2005, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, and 2003, Venice Biennale, Italy. In France, Franz Ackermann's work featured in the Biennale d’Art Contemporain in Lyon and Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse in 2005, at la maison rouge in Paris in 2004 and at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2003.

More recently, the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe (2014) and Berlinische Galerie in Berlin (2013) held major solo exhibitions of his work. In 2018, for the newly renovated Miami Beach Convention Center, Franz Ackermann created the vibrant mural About Sand for the external façade of the building.