Athos Burez, visual artist

Campaign for the spring 2026 season of VIERNULVIER, the arts centre in De Vooruit in Ghent. Under the motto “een voorjaar om bij weg te smelten”, a spring to melt away with, frozen fruit was stacked into a popsicle, a still life and a juicer, glistening with frost and slowly thawing into colour against the dark.

Campaign for the new bottle design of Paveau’s hospitality line. Paveau is the Belgian glassware brand of designer Isabelle De Pauw, built around reusable glass made to last. The entire set was built from ice sculptures: clear glass on clear ice, a still life about transparency, cold and light.

Campaign imagery for the 17th edition of Filmfestival Oostende. Festival Master Charlotte Vandermeersch chose Super Natural as its theme: the thin line between the natural and the supernatural, between landscape, body and imagination. The series carried the festival’s visual identity and was shown as an exhibition along the seafront in Ostend, accompanied by a campaign film by Ann-Julie Vervaeke.

Campaign for Jeune Premier, the Belgian brand of colourful schoolbags and accessories for children, founded in Ostend in 2012 by Hélène Fransen and Bruno Piers, and now sold in some thirty countries.

Campaign for the spring–summer 2022 collections of Arte, the Belgian wallcovering house. Inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity, the set became an imaginary museum of columns, busts and plinths, dressed in the new wallcoverings of Les Thermes and Sculptura, from the bathing figures of Saturnia to the drawn leaves of Piante.

Images for the ADPKD Fund of KU Leuven, which supports research into autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, the most common hereditary kidney disease, in which cysts slowly grow in both kidneys. Kidneys built from candy, presented like precious objects on a pedestal: playful at first sight, a quiet image of a disease that grows from within. The images were used for the fund’s greeting cards, sold to raise money for research.

Campaign for the eyewear of Florentina Leitner, the Austrian designer based in Antwerp and a graduate of its Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Known for three-dimensional flowers, romantic silhouettes and seemingly inflated sunglasses, her eyewear has been worn by Lady Gaga, Kylie Jenner and Ellie Goulding.

Launch campaign for Copperhead Non-Alcoholic, the alcohol-free gin of the Belgian brand founded by pharmacist Yvan Vindevogel, “the alchemist”. A still life of laboratory glass floating in the sky, telling the story of the distilling process: botanicals, extraction and distillation, the impossible made possible.

Autumn–winter 2021 campaign for n.d.c. made by hand, the Belgian-owned shoe brand with its flagship store in Brussels, known for artisanal shoes handmade in Portugal.

Campaign for the Landshapes collection of Jov, the Belgian family company founded in 2001 by Gilles Vandenbussche that makes handmade, high-end rugs in Europe. Part of a new brand identity created by the Milan design studio Studio Pepe, built around craftsmanship and sustainability: rugs as landscapes, a play of natural materials, colour and shape.

A contemporary remake of James Ensor’s painting De Baden van Oostende, made for the reopening of the James Ensor House in Ostend. Where Ensor mocked the bathing bourgeoisie of his day, the new version holds up a mirror to ours: nakedness and body image, LGBTQ+ visibility, migration, pollution and, inevitably, face masks. 180 extras, chosen from more than 600 applicants, were photographed over two days on the beach of Ostend. The final image, 100 × 140 cm, was shown at the James Ensor House and pasted up on the streets as a poster campaign, alongside my exhibition James Ensor Recomposed.

A second campaign for Laurence d’Ari, the Antwerp eyewear label of Laurence Bourguignon, continuing the story of its bold, sculptural frames: Belgian design, made by hand in Italy, inspired by vintage glamour.

Campaign for the René Magritte capsule collection of Diamanti Per Tutti, the Antwerp diamond jewellery house. Each piece quotes a painting, from the bowler hat and green apple to the pipe and the dove full of sky, staged in miniature rooms where rocks float, clouds drift through the ceiling and nothing is quite what it seems.

Campaign for Deep Web, the spring–summer 2019 couture collection of Flora Miranda, the Austrian designer based in Antwerp who works at the crossroads of fashion and technology. The collection explored machine learning, how computers learn to read clothing, bodies and gender, through hyper-feminine silhouettes inspired by Amanda Lepore.

Still life campaign for the first sunglasses of Laurence d’Ari, the Antwerp eyewear label of Laurence Bourguignon: Belgian design, made by hand in Italy, with bold, sculptural frames inspired by vintage glamour.

Campaign for Giovane, the Belgian fashion retailer now known as HER. A quiet, slightly surreal country scene: a weathered clapboard barn, a washing line of knitwear strung between two trees, and a woman in a flowered dress standing barefoot on the back of a white horse to hang it out to dry.

Campaign for the Natan sunglasses, made under licence by the French eyewear house Binoche for Natan, the Belgian couture house of Edouard Vermeulen that dresses the Belgian royal family.

Campaign for Campari Creates, bringing art to the aperitivo moment. Together with photographer Sanne De Wilde, a limited edition of transparent coasters was designed that double as camera filters for your phone, bathing every picture in Campari red and blue light. Launched in Brussels at the Vanhaerents Art Collection.

Campaign imagery for Schitterend Verlangen (Glittering Desire), the exhibition at the MAS on more than 570 years of Antwerp and diamonds, told through five desires: love, the divine, status, power and their darker consequences. Diamond-set stars of royal orders, multiplied in an emerald kaleidoscope until they become a glittering, endless dream of wealth and status.

Campaign for Morobé, the Antwerp shoe label of designer Virginie Morobé: high-end footwear made in Italy, where contemporary elegance meets a powerful femininity, with flowers, prints and appliqués as signature details.

Campaign for H&M Conscious, the line made from more sustainable materials such as organic cotton, recycled polyester and Tencel, with Belgian top model Élise Crombez.

Campaign imagery for Antwerp à la carte. On Cities and Food, the exhibition at the MAS museum in Antwerp about the city and what it eats: a tasty history of food supply and trade, and the questions it raises today, from food waste to sustainability. A pink still life of take-away boxes, jelly and a pudding crowned with Antwerp’s cathedral and a cocktail cherry.

Campaign for the René Magritte collection of Café Costume, the Belgian tailoring house of Bruno Van Gils. Suits with hidden linings after Magritte’s clouds, The Castle of the Pyrenees and The Empire of Light: a discreet, slightly mysterious elegance, revealed only when the jacket opens.

Images for the Hanging Lamps of Muller Van Severen, produced by the Antwerp design label Valerie Objects. The lamp was born in the designers’ own home: an old house without a socket above the dining table, so they made a lamp that hangs from the wall. Lines of steel and brass that read like drawings in the air, the piece with which the duo’s design story began.

Campaign for Linda Farrow, the British luxury eyewear house founded in the 1970s and revived by her son Simon Jablon, known for sculptural sunglasses and collaborations with fashion designers.

Campaign for ENES, the Antwerp fashion label and boutique known for its fur and leather pieces.

Summer campaign for Café Costume, the Belgian tailoring house of Bruno Van Gils, with Max Colombie, the voice of Oscar and the Wolf. A linen suit, a striped shirt and sunglasses, worn where suits never go: deep underwater in a sunlit pool, floating through rippling light.