For ZEIT's expo 12, we brought together three contemporary artists and one design engineer, plus a monstre sacré in the field of post-war geometric abstraction. Some play it hard, some play it soft, but what links them all is their love for colour, shape and structure. And that’s exactly why we love them.

Ilse Pierard’s work ‘is an ode to the cell. To the innermost of something. To the hope and the promise that is contained in the core of all life.’ Her ‘cells’ are vulnerable yet powerful, very intuitive too, her choice of colours and materials always captivating. It is no coincidence we invited Ilse to be part of our winter show: with her work, she brings light into the world.

Situated on the crossroads of art, architecture and design, Myriam Vangenechten’s sculptures seduce us with their playfulness. ‘My analytical thinking skills, typical of my training as an architect, fed on concepts such as stacking, scaling, positive and negative, the number, the word... It was a relief for me to be able to work uncompromisingly on a design, only to be limited by my own cognitive ability, or the laws of the design, or the material itself.’

Kees van de Wal first painted landscapes that quickly evolved into divisions of horizontal planes with occasional suggestions of clouds and vegetation. This ultimately led to the seemingly simple pieces he creates today. Now it’s purely about the form, the matter, and the colour, or as he puts it: ‘I’m searching for the ultimate shape, a shape that represents nothing yet means everything.’

Andreas Biront recently graduated as a design engineer. His 3D-printed Bohu chair and side table, in a limited edition of 5, are made from recycled post-consumer plastics and are fully circular: no waste is created during the production and the furniture can be fully recycled if necessary. The colour palette is taken from the fauna and flora of the amazon rainforest, based upon the rates of their individual levels of extinction.

Guy Vandenbranden is one of our all-time heroes. In the early 50s, after a brief period of figurative and lyrical abstract painting, he radically opted for geometric abstraction, a practice he sustained until his death in 2014. In our Expo 12, we pay homage to the master of Belgian constructivism showing some iconic pieces on panel, canvas and paper, mainly from the 70s and the 80s.

Artists: Ilse Pierard, Myriam Vangenechten, Kees van de Wal, Guy Vandenbranden, Andreas Biront, Dimitrih Correa