Petit Déjeuner sur l’Herbe: Victor Verhelst & Niels Raoul Boone at Footnote Gallery

In the present cultural climate, where discipline borders have been increasingly blurred due to their collapse, design is far from being only concerned with functionality. Things, environments, images, while answering the call of utility, become tools of narration, emotional worlds, and surfaces that give rise to new modes of interaction and thinking. In this way, the revival of domesticity as an immersive environment – one of intimacy as well as performance, of familiarity yet construction – comes to express a wider collective yearning to dwell and connect.

For some time now, the term “environment” itself has been subject to intense scrutiny among artists and designers. Space, which is no longer seen as a neutral context, acquires the ability to condition perception, experience, and behavior; furniture resembles sculpture, fabrics become architectural, and installation borders on theater. It is within this continuous process of interrelation that a new approach to comfort evolves; comfort that does not rely on uniform mass-produced solutions but rather involves ambiguity and poetry created via textures, gestures, colors, and ritual acts.

In this exact confrontation between the home and its fictional counterpart emerges the project Petit Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, which was exhibited from May 15 to June 13, 2026, at Footnote Gallery, Ghent. This exhibition unites the two artists who form part of the artistic and design collective SIDEQUEST, a Belgian platform made up of artists and designers with varied backgrounds to produce hybrid art. Curation by Sofie Middernacht and supported by plus one projects.

SIDEQUEST operates as a fluid collaborative ecosystem where graphic design, installation, furniture, textiles, and spatial experimentation coexist within immersive environments. Positioning themselves almost as contemporary magicians, the collective approaches creation as a process of transformation and play, moving seamlessly between collaborations with art institutions and contributions to music festivals and cultural platforms. Their practice constantly negotiates the boundaries between function and narrative, utility and atmosphere, experience and materiality.

With Petit Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, Boone and Verhelst construct a shared domestic landscape in which furniture, textiles, and spatial interventions converge into an immersive composition. The exhibition takes shape as an interior suspended somewhere between living room and theatrical set: a space designed not only to be observed, but mentally inhabited. The title — inevitably recalling Manet’s iconic painting — becomes here an invitation to conviviality and presence, suggesting the possibility of a symbolic picnic staged within an imagined everyday scene.



At the center of the exhibition lies the artists’ shared fascination with expressive and unconventional furniture forms, combined with a deep sensitivity toward textile craftsmanship and material tactility. Every object oscillates between function and sculptural gesture, contributing to an environment where textures, surfaces, and colors become perceptual tools.



Ghent-based designer and maker Niels Raoul Boone approaches his practice through the technical development and production of objects, focusing particularly on material behavior and manufacturing processes. Rather than prioritizing form alone, Boone investigates how materials react to specific treatments, often operating at the intersection of industrial production and traditional craftsmanship. His portfolio includes technical collaborations with major design figures such as Muller Van Severen, for whom he produced the candles presented during Salone del Mobile Milan 2026. The project exemplifies his ability to translate complex design concepts into precise physical objects while maintaining a direct relationship between process, material, and use.



In parallel, Victor Verhelst explores the relationship between digital imagery and physical materialization. Born in 1997 and based in Ghent, the visual artist constructs hyper-stylized worlds through 3D architecture, saturated color palettes, glitch aesthetics, and neon dystopian atmospheres. His multidisciplinary practice spans monumental textiles, scenography, installation, and interactive technologies, transforming virtual abstraction into tactile spatial experiences. Among his most notable works are the monumental carpet created for Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe’s An Ode to a Love Lost at Toneelhuis, as well as visual identities developed for Abrupt Festival, Kunsthal Mechelen, and the BADAFF film festival.

In the show at Footnote Gallery, the fusion of the two approaches produces an atmosphere that is simultaneously organic and synthetic, recognizable and eerie. Boone’s tactility and material awareness come up against Verhelst’s digital visual world, generating a constant interplay between physicality and simulation. What comes about is not a singular narrative, but a site where viewers are invited to dwell, gather, and place themselves within it.

Petit Déjeuner sur l’Herbe can be seen, finally, as an inquiry into inhabiting the contemporary environment and forging new modes of collectivity. As contemporary conditions become ever more defined by speed, stimulation, and dematerialization, the curators offer us a slow, imaginative space.

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Words: Simone Lorusso