The Showcases and Thought Models occupy a special place in the oeuvre of Jan Fabre. They afford us a glimpse into the artist's mental world. Fabre's ideas get their first shape in drawings or three-dimensional objects. Sometimes they refer to an image that appeared previously as an element in an earlier work, sometimes they resurface in later work, e.g. executed as a sculpture or used as a prop in a stage performance. However, the showcases and thought models are certainly no building plans or blueprints. They are autonomous works that can be read as exercises of the imagination. They constitute a bunker of creativity, like the basement of the artist warrior, where the artist secludes himself from the world. In his underground shelter, he has all the materials he needs to build a world of his own (the insects preserved in formalin) and to defend it (the bombs and grenades).' *

In the spring of 2006, a special exhibition of Fabre's Showcases and Thought Models was held in the main entrance hall of the Flemish Parliament in Brussels. The showcases (kijkdozen) and thought models (denkmodellen) are scale models and three-dimensional explorations of ideas and artworks. Flor Bex was the curator of the exhibition, which showed Showcases and Thought Models dating from the period from 1977 to 2004.