Paris Photo 2026

Keteleer Gallery is pleased to present its second participation in Paris Photo 2026, bringing together for the first time the conceptual work of Philippe Van Snick (1946-2019, BE) alongside new series by Paul Kooiker (1964, NL) and Sybren Vanoverberghe (1996, BE). The presentation unfolds as a dialogue across generations, exploring how images can shape, structure, and challenge our perception of the world.

A key focus of the booth is the introduction of Philippe Van Snick's photographic practice-an essential yet historically underexposed aspect of his oeuvre. Known for his rigorous yet poetic system based on the decimal structure (0-9) and a corresponding palette of ten colors, Van Snick extended his inquiry into visual perception through the camera. His images reveal a painterly sensitivity while simultaneously questioning the act of making itself: points, lines, surfaces, and colors become both subject and method. Situated between conceptual clarity and intuitive experience, these works open a space where mathematical logic and lived reality converge. By foregrounding this body of work at Paris Photo, Keteleer Gallery aims to reposition Van Snick within a broader photographic discourse.

In contrast, yet in resonance, Sybren Vanoverberghe's practice explores space and time as constructions shaped by history, memory, and the act of looking. He presents a new body of work that marks his first explicit engagement with the human figure. Here, the body appears not as a living presence, but as an image, a shell, a surrogate, in a series of sarcophagi that render the human form in a direct, almost literal manner. Captured in the former Egyptian Museum in Cairo, these images are complemented by views of display cabinets encountered within the institution. The works function as double objects: depictions of artifacts already contained within systems of display, onto which the photographic surface adds another layer. Their faded, dust-laden quality suggests that the images themselves are subject to the same conditions of time and preservation as the objects they depict. Through a considered approach to scale and the use of cast aluminum frames, the works are articulated as sculptural objects in their own right.

Paul Kooiker's contribution brings a different yet complementary perspective through two distinct bodies of work. For the prestigious Fashion Eye series published by Louis Vuitton, Kooiker travelled to Bucharest, approaching the Romanian capital as a blank canvas and an unfamiliar territory to be explored as a perfect stranger. His resulting series combines black-and-white views of the city, from minute details to monumental architecture, with colour portraits of young people from Bucharest's creative scene. These portraits are the only identifiable human faces in the photobook, offering an intimate glimpse of a contemporary generation within the urban landscape.

Alongside this new series, Kooiker presents work from his recent project in Pompeii, developed for issue 04 of EPOCH in close collaboration with the archaeological park. Pigeons inhabit the ancient ruins, oscillating between the symbolic associations of the dove as a bearer of peace and transcendence and the more mundane image of the urban bird. In Kooiker's images, their uncanny presence introduces a tension between the persistence of life and the weight of history, nature and human civilization.