Solo exhibition: ‘IN ARENA’ by Florian Tomballe at Gallery Hioco Delany
‘IN ARENA’
17.01.’26 - 15.02.’26
Opening
Saturday, January 17, 2026, 2–7 pm
Gallery Hioco Delany
Volkstraat 4/6
2000 Antwerp - BE
galleryhiocodelany.com
info@galleryhiocodelany.com
@gallery.hioco.delany
For previews or inquiries
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Exhibition text
For his first solo exhibition at Hioco Delany, Florian Tomballe brings the studio - the place where everything begins - into the exhibition space itself. The title, IN ARENA, refers to this site of action: where work happens, where things are tried and tested, where decisions are made and forms gradually emerge. It is the ground on which the sculptures come into being, and at the same time the space in which they are encountered.
The human body lies at the heart of Tomballeís work: large, rounded, solid, almost as if carved from a single block. In his sculptural practice, this is often literally the case. Many works begin as large blocks of foam, which he cuts and shapes before finishing them in acrylic resin. With knife, saw, and a great deal of patience, he seems to excavate a form that already lies hidden within the material. Only when the sculpture appears to signal that it is complete does he stop. The result is a series of compact, closed volumes that convey a strong sense of weight and mass.
Tomballe ís distinctive sculptures and drawings recall ancient figures from temples or archaeological sites, yet they remain unmistakably contemporary. Their faces are calm and inward-looking, almost timeless - less portraits of individuals than expressions of a mood or a state of unity and concentration. Tomballe is primarily fascinated by form and weight, by the way a body can twist, bend, or come to rest. This gives his figures something monumental: a quiet presence, unhurried and unadorned.
IN ARENA also marks a clear development in Tomballe's practice. Alongside his drawings and works in foam and acrylic resin, he presents a series of wooden sculptures for the first time. Here, the act of carving is no longer concealed: marks, cracks, and splits are allowed to remain, and the material itself is given a greater role in determining the direction of the work. The resulting pieces appear less "finished," yet for that very reason feel more open and alive. Tomballe deliberately seeks the moment at which a sculpture feels exactly right - not smoothing it over completely, but stopping when the form itself begins to breathe.
In Tomballeís world, two affinities come together: a love for the idealised forms of classical antiquity, and an attraction to the bold simplification and distortion of modernism. His figures evoke objects we recognise from museums and excavations, yet they also seem to belong to another, perhaps parallel time - as if they were remnants of an imagined civilisation. They are not copies, but new encounters shaped by a shared vocabulary of bodies, faces, and gestures.
The visible traces of making ensure that IN ARENA does not offer neat conclusions. Instead, the exhibition invites viewers to step into the same arena as the sculptures themselves -suspended between emergence and completion, between Tomballeís craftsmanship and the contingencies of material. His sculptures continue to move, even when they appear to be finished.
Text by Bas Blaasse