Images du monde visionnaire (1963): Henri Michaux and Film

When

March 5 to May 23, 2026

Where

Rozier 1, 9000 Gent

Opening hours

Every Thursday, Friday, Saturday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Belgian-French writer and artist Henri Michaux (1899-1984) is best known for his surreal travel stories through real and fictional lands. In addition, many of Michaux’s artworks, which are usually referred to as ‘art informel’ and ‘lyrical abstraction’, have been marked by psychedelic experiments with hashish and mescaline since the 1950s.

This is also the case in the short film Images du monde visionnaire, which Michaux made in 1963 in collaboration with French filmmaker Éric Duvivier for the pharmaceutical company Sandoz, which in those years conducted research in the field of psychotropic drugs but also supported a veritable ‘cinémathèque de Sandoz’. Attempting to translate the effects of psychotropic drugs into moving images, the film is shown on a loop at the exhibition.

In addition, the exhibition includes various paintings, watercolours and drawings by Michaux, including several pieces from the Vandenhove collection as well as loans from public and private collections. Finally, the exhibition focuses on Michaux’s publications that are related to the film or to his pictorial and graphic experiments.

The exhibition is curated by Prof. Dr. Steven Jacobs (Department of Art History & VANDENHOVE Centre) and Mats Antonissen, who wrote a master’s thesis on Images du monde visionnaire.

The exhibition is the result of a collaboration with Prof. Dr. Francis Mus and Prof. Dr. Anneleen Spiessens (Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication), who, together with students from the Master's programme in Literary Translation, are responsible for the Dutch translation of various text fragments by Michaux.

The exhibition is accompanied by a book published by MER.Books.