REVIVING JAMES ENSOR, A NIGHT OF ART, HUMOR & POETRY AT THE GRAND GALA OF BOZAR

How do you bring a painter’s imagination to life, not on a canvas, but in motion, among guests, inside a museum?

For the Grand Gala of the Bozar Museum, RêvARTe was invited to reinterpret the world of James Ensor, the celebrated Belgian painter known for his fantastical characters and satirical spirit.

Our mission: to create an immersive artistic performance that fuses art, performance, and elegance.

The brief and concept

To bring Ensor’s surreal world into the present, we designed an experience that blurred the lines between painting and reality.

Our vision: to revive Ensor’s masterpieces through poetic, whimsical characters and a sophisticated style.

• Performances: Our goal was to bring diversity and nuance to each artistic moment, crafting a flow of movement, emotion, and surprise that evolved throughout the evening. Every scene was designed to captivate, keeping guests immersed in a living, breathing work of art.

• Costume Design: Each look balanced historical precision with a painterly sensibility. Layers of delicately draped colored tulle evoked brushstrokes and textures, turning every performer into a moving canvas that echoed James Ensor’s artistic spirit.

• Makeup & Props: Textures, pigments, and masks were used to blur identities and dissolve the boundaries between reality and imagination. The result: characters that seemed to have stepped directly out of a painting, mysterious, poetic, and undeniably alive.

  
  

The creation inspired by James Ensor

• Tableau vivant: During the cocktail hour, we wanted our characters to evolve into an ambulating performance in the Henry Leboeuf Room. Using masks, another symbol of James Ensor's work, our dancers, and actors play with identities, creating a mystical, poetic atmosphere.

• Welcome performance: The idea is for the artists to carry empty frames, as if emerging from a painting, to immerse guests in the world of James Ensor and the ambience of the museum.

Costumes

Concept: Respect the era of Ensor's works while creating a visual quality akin to a painting.

Execution: The challenge was to honor the time period of James Ensor's works while bringing a painterly quality to life. We used period costumes as a base and added colored tulle, organically arranged on the body, to mimic brushstrokes and paint smudges extending beyond the body’s limits.

Styling: The styling juxtaposed historical accuracy (late 19th, early 20th century) with a charismatic, mysterious flair, reminiscent of Ensor's characters. The aim was to blend the exactitude of the era with an artistic, almost otherworldly appearance.

Accessories

Concept: Accessories play a crucial role in defining each character's identity and uniting them throughout the event.

Execution: The gilded frames were sourced one by one to create accessories with a unique history, naturally patinated by time.

For the masks, we built individual bases to reflect the eccentric shapes of Ensor's, then hand-painted them, taking inspiration from the artist's work.

And that's not counting the top hat, fans, canes, capelines, boas, and so on, all sourced from period costume collections!

Beauty

Concept: To make the characters appear as if they had been drawn in real life from Ensor's paintings.

Execution: Use of textures and brushstrokes on faces and bodies to give the characters a painted look, while respecting an early 20th-century style.

A night of art, humor & poetry

Throughout the evening, guests were guided through a poetic journey, a celebration where art transcended time, and every movement, costume, and expression became part of a grand living composition.

With RêvARTe, the boundaries between art and entertainment dissolve, leaving only emotion, imagination, and beauty in motion.

Discover full performance here