BRUSSELS.- Contemporary creation will be at the heart of the European Cultural Season organised on the occasion of the French Presidency of the European Union, from 1 July to 31 December 2008. In Belgium, contemporary art will have the place of honour in the course of numerous events, exhibitions, conferences, films, meetings with artists and collectors, etc.

Under its traditional title, in explicit reference to art history, the exhibition 21st Century Portrait and Landscape shows the degree to which the genres referred to as landscape and portrait remain current. As in the past, artists handle their environment and their contemporaries, with their own way of looking, but remaining anchored in their era and the socio-cultural context that is familiar to them. Of course the techniques have changed, and it is obviously not by accident that all the works brought together in this exhibition are photographs. This discipline has made a name for itself for good in the field of the visual arts, to the point that many images presented in the exhibition constitute true “photographic paintings”.

The portraits, done by Valérie Belin, Mohamed Bourouissa, Denis Darzacq, Véronique Ellena, Charles Fréger, Pierre Gonnord, Philippe Ramette, Isabelle Waternaux witness to the diversity of contemporary society and to a quest for identity of its various components, under a multitude of aspects, whether they are social, cultural, ethnic, economic or geographical. These differences are reinforced by the variety of forms used.

The landscapes by Eric Aupol, Florence Chevallier, Stéphane Couturier, Thibault Cuisset, Guillaume Lemarchal, Eric Poitevin and Jean-Luc Tartarin are not fabricated, but each possesses its own specific character. They fit within the overall vision that these artists can have of the environment that surrounds
them or of certain aspects of it that they have decided to explore in accordance with their own centres of interest.

The exhibition presents the convergences that emerge between the images shown within these two spheres, which, each in their own way, establish a profile of the world that surrounds us.