Harry Irene is a multigenerational group show curated by gallery artist Joe Bradley. It brings the work of seven American artists to Brussels for the first time and includes paintings, collages, ceramics and sculptures. Not uncoincidentally, the exhibition is named after a Captain Beefheart song. Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) is both an artist and musician, as are Ed Askew, Brian Belott and Annie Pearlman. The crossover between music and art is just one of the connecting themes in Harry Irene. Pure artistic expression is another: Hawkins Bolden, who was blind, made his sculptures without any reference to artistic trends or a potential audience. Laura Craig McNellis, who has nonverbal autism, has been painting since childhood to describe her observations. They hail, respectively, from Memphis and Nashville. Alice Mackler, now 92 years old, spent decades working on her art in private before being discovered in the late 1990s. Mixed-media techniques, unconventional materials and found objects are yet other connecting threads: Mackler typically builds her sculptures from tiny pats of clay and paints on pictures from fashion magazines; Cloud, Belott and Bolden all utilise found objects and accumulative techniques; McNellis paints on newsprint paper. In this vibrant, energetic, and multidisciplinary show, Bradley presents the work of outsiders and art world mavericks who, to paraphrase Mackler, "just do what they want to do".

Press release courtesy Xavier Hufkens.