LOUSTAL Le temps suspendu

From 11 September to 24 October 2026, the Huberty & Breyne’s Brussels | Châtelain gallery is hosting a new exhibition dedicated to the work of Jacques de Loustal, a key figure in the world of contemporary drawing and illustration. This unique collection of paintings, charcoal drawings, illustrations, sketches and reverse-glass paintings highlights the remarkable coherence of a body of work that spans a whole range of techniques while retaining a strong sense of identity. The exhibition includes a “conversation” with Georges Simenon, a book dedicated to Loustal’s charcoal drawings and a number of recent creations, and invites visitors to step into the singular world of an artist who has come to be seen as one of the great masters of atmosphere.

Loustal’s world is unique and instantly recognisable thanks to its quietly atmospheric scenes and images of journeys taken, its bars, hotels, ports, solitary figures and darkened streets… Over the years, the artist has assembled a cohesive body of work while employing a range of techniques and formats. Whether executed in charcoal or ink, watercolour or oils, on glass, paper or canvas, his works succeed in transporting the viewer to another reality.

The exhibition opens with a large selection of cover illustrations created for the collection of Georges Simenon novels published by Le Monde. Each image is rendered in a very pure black and white, and some lend themselves readily to enlargement and the addition of colour, leading to the possibility of reading the work in a different way. The Simenon connection is nothing new: for years now, Loustal has shown a keen interest in the work of the celebrated Belgian novelist. The two men share the same focus on mood and atmosphere rather than the spectacular. They home in on elegant characters who are deeply reserved, sometimes melancholy, and who struggle with their own inner contradictions. And they share, too, a love of travel, Loustal, for his part, drawing inspiration from the photographs and notebooks filled during the course of his various journeys. The series of illustrations featured in this exhibition perfectly exemplifies the “conversation” between the work of a great novelist and that of a great illustrator, revealing a clear kinship of shared sensibilities.

The release this summer of a new book by Caurette – Les Arts Dessinés, devoted to Loustal’s Fusains drawings, highlights a lesser-known aspect of the artist’s work – his experiments with black. Harnessing the unique properties of charcoal, Loustal explores deep blacks, velvety greys and broad masses of shadow to create silent scenes that may be melancholy or mysterious. A few bold strokes suffice to conjure a landscape or an architectural form; yet beneath this apparent simplicity lies a masterful command of tonal values and composition. Loustal’s approach to charcoal recalls certain landscape and observational drawing traditions shared by the classical illustrators who came before him. For Loustal, charcoal serves as much to render light as it does to define shapes and figures. The interplay between the unworked paper and intense blacks creates an impression of warmth, backlighting, or twilight. Notably, some of these images draw their inspiration from a three-year project to design numerous tourist information panels for autoroutes across the Savoie, Haute-Savoie, Isère, Drôme and Mont Blanc regions. 

A selection of new canvases, nude sketches and reverse-glass paintings completes the exhibition, revealing the scope of a body of work that moves between various practices without ever losing a sense of its own identity. What makes Loustal’s work unique is the way he sees things – and his ability to share that way of seeing. It involves a distinctive approach to framing and representing visual reality. It often begins with the image – its frame, its composition – and extends to the title of the work itself, which is frequently offbeat, poetic and – dare we say it? – "Loustalian."

OPENING
Tursday 10 September 2026 
from 6:00 p.m
in the presence of the artist

EXHIBITION
From friday 11 September 2026 
to Saturday 24 October 2026

BRUSSELS | Châtelain
33 place du Châtelain, 1050 Brussels
Tuesday > Saturday
11.00 am - 6.00 pm