Brussels is a real hub of creativity and a haven for artists and collectors. Contemporary art can be found in the most beautiful parts of the European capital, thanks to the city’s countless institutions and art galleries. Contemporary art will make a comeback in September. Exhibitions and events will throw the spotlight on artists from different walks of life and disciplines. Brussels’ institutions, art galleries and artist collectives are pulling out all the stops to deliver a high-quality programme. Whether they are indoors, outdoors, or even online, these activities will satisfy everyone’s curiosity.
KANAL – Centre Pompidou, the Boghossian Foundation – Villa Empain, La Loge, CENTRALE, Wiels, MIMA and many others play host to a vast array of high calibre exhibitions and performances. In addition, there are the hundreds of galleries showcasing the world’s finest art each year. After a number of dormant months as a result of the health crisis, a strong and diverse programme awaits in September. Here is a taster of what to expect:
Autumn exhibitions
Gauthier Hubert – “Réunions Familiales” (Un goût de Liberté)
Brussels artist Gauthier Hubert brings together a selection of recent and slightly older paintings which, on the face of it, seem to have nothing in common, but without the ties that bind them, would not even actually exist.
Xavier Noiret-Thomé & Henk Visch – Panorama
Xavier Noiret-Thomé, a French artist based in Brussels, brings you an exceptional collection of paintings and collages inspired by knowledge, experience and assumed influences. He has chosen to invite Dutch sculptor, designer and painter, Henk Visch, who creates large and miniature sculptures that he feels resemble human thoughts. Their works, both intense and direct, but sometimes humorous, depict reality and try to navigate the creative process and its impact on life. Artists, performers, jazz musicians and intergenerational-workshop hosts will provide a different perspective on the duo.
Post Growth
The Post Growth exhibition consists of critical analysis that helps to spark and flesh out thinking about the possibilities for post economic growth. Crossing over art, science and activism, the series of works presented encourages visitors to consider the radical implications of a world reconnected with the physical, material and living realities of the biosphere, by drawing inspiration from thinking and practices from eco-feminism, environmental accounting, aboriginal knowledge and hacking. Post Growth has been created from action-research work spearheaded by DISNOVATION.ORG, along with Pauline Briand, Baruch Gottlieb, Julien Maudet and Clémence Seurat. The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of events (such as conferences and performances) which will provide a platform for discussing and fleshing out the themes covered.
NUDES – Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel
These two complementary exhibitions will showcase a huge range of incredible work by the French sculptor duo, Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel, using materials such as pink marble and granite in particular. One of the exhibitions, set up inside the CLEARING Gallery in Forest, will display the two sculptors’ recent works. The other exhibition will be set up outdoors in the magnificent gardens of the Van Buuren Museum in Uccle and will run until March 2021.
Mona Vǎtǎmanu & Florin Tudor – ‘Omnia Communia Deserta’
This exhibition will showcase research by Mona Vǎtǎmanu and Florin Tudor on the Omnia Hall, which, after being restored and renovated, is set to become the home of the National Dance Centre in Bucharest. Designed in 1967, this Brutalist style hall was mainly used as a location for Communist-Party rallies and served Ceaușescu’s ideological agenda. The wooden decorative features inside allude to archaic and folkloric principles. During the renovation works, its ornaments and sculptural features will be dismantled, obliterating the building’s former symbolic function and its uncomfortable historical legacy.
Risquons-Tout
Risquons-Tout is an ambitious group exhibition striving to showcase artists and other creatives working in the Eurocore region, which includes Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne, Düsseldorf, London and Paris. The invited artists take different approaches to transitioning, translating and transgressing. Risquons-Tout will also include a performance component and an Open School that will be used as a laboratory for artists, students, researchers and experts to broach subject areas relating to risk and unpredictability through a range of alternative methods for spreading knowledge.
Kurt Lewy – Towards Abstraction
A painter, enameller and illustrator, Kurt Lewy (1898-1963) was born in Essen (Germany), where he taught graphic techniques to students at the Folkwang University of the Arts from 1929 to 1933. When the Nazis came to power, the Jewish artist was dismissed from his position. Two years later, he fled Hitler’s Germany and settled in Brussels. This exhibition throws the spotlight on a leading figure of Belgium’s Post-War painting scene. Visitors can enjoy a work depicting a pathway which moves away from being representative and ends up being abstract.
Danser Brut
Danser Brut attempts to shed new light on the connection between dance and involuntary or repetitive movements. The exhibition examines the different ways that our bodies, faces and hands can be used to express and depict how we live. Thanks to its mix of Art Brut, modern and contemporary art, medical archive documents and film excerpts, the exhibition cannot be pinned down to just one simple category. It does not want to simply depict the history of dance, but instead looks to broaden our horizons and show modernity in a different light.
IT NEVER ENDS, John M Armleder & guests
A painter, sculptor, installation creator, performer, archivist, curator, collector, editor, bookseller, gallerist and more, John M Armleder is one of the art world’s major figures from the last fifty years. The artist has been invited to fill the space inside the Kanal-Centre Pompidou and the Showroom spaces at the former Citroën garage for seven months. Over six open stories, Armleder brings visitors a collection of exhibitions, events and encounters to give them the chance to immerse themselves in his world and the things that he loves, along with a series of new, monumental installations that he has specifically designed for the venue. Running at the same time as the exhibition, the Rectangle collective will also set up an installation by the artist in the lifts at Place Poelaert.
Current exhibitions
Mappa Mundi
This exhibition features contemporary artists from all over the world. It reflects the recent interest shown by artists in mapping areas in a completely new way, based on their own aesthetic pursuits. Some have created numerous works on this subject area, such as Marcel Broodthaers or Mona Hatoum, while others have occasionally come across world maps during their research, even if it has led to substantial collections being created.
Zoo
In situ installations and paintings lie at the heart of ZOO, the new exhibition at MIMA. An explosion of colours, lots of humour and a series of pop culture references: this summer, MIMA is featuring anthropomorphism in art prominently. Animals appear in all of the works at this exhibition, which boasts psychedelic motifs within installations inspired by cartoon aesthetics.
Autumn events
Brussels Gallery Weekend
Just like every other year, the Brussels Gallery Weekend marks the end of the summer by giving the public the chance to explore the art galleries and exhibition spaces featuring in its ambitious programme. The main focal point of the Brussels Gallery Weekend is the tours through forty or so renowned contemporary art galleries. However, it is also an exhibition of works by emerging artists, whose works will fill up a large number of the city’s shop windows this year. There are also new partnerships with institutions and artist spaces, such as Grande Surface, Clovis XV and the Maison des Arts in Schaerbeek.
Kunstenfestivaldesarts
This year, Kunstenfestivaldesarts is reinventing itself and will take place over three major events. The first of these events will take place in September under the “Every Inside has an Outside” banner, focussing on the present day and multiple overlapping spaces. The programme will feature seven artistic projects, which will mainly occur in the municipality of Schaerbeek. The second part will roll out online over October with diasporic schools being set up; these are six new artistic projects reflecting on heritage, the present to which they relate and the new ways of sharing knowledge in diasporic contexts, and transmission as a political and empowering tool. Finally, in November, the “News from Home” event will prominently feature new Brussels creations.
And in October…
ArtContest
ArtContest is the main annual visual art competition for young artists up to 35 years old residing in Belgium. This competition, which has links to Belgium’s emerging arts scene, aims to unearth, follow and support the work of young contemporary artists over a long period. This year, 10 new young visual artists, selected by a judging panel, will exhibit their work as part of the competition.
Private collection of contemporary art « Galila’s P.O.C. » opening soon in Brussels
As of October 2020 (subject to the Covid-19 sanitary situation), YUM21C will open to the public the doors of Galila’s P.O.C. (Passion, Obsession, Collection), a contemporary “cabinet of curiosities” housed in a completely renovated industrial building of Forest. The inaugural exhibition Overdose will immerse the viewer into the eclectic, astonishing and non-conformist universe of a thematic collection built in close relation with many emerging artists.