This year’s Art Brussels: an overview and some highlights
This year’s Art Brussels takes place at the new tours and taxi’s location which is a bit messy on entering as it’s still a construction site, but it’s Brussels so it’s hardly something to complain about. Especially because inside there is enough to see and talk about to forget where you are just for a while. A big contribution to such conversations is a public program produced by Brussels based Aleppo called Blackmarket that has an intriguing list of speakers and performances such as Dora Garcia and Natasha Ginwala.
When entering the fair one of the first things you can walk up to is the stripped technology of Emmanuel Van der Auwera revealing the underbelly of the effects of what unfolds on both sides of a monitor screen. He’s with Harlan Levey Projects who is one of the thirty galleries profiled as Discovery all located in the first hall: not older than eight years and presenting artists not yet introduced in the European context – although one could say not yet poignantly presented because Van der Auwera also currently has a work in a group show at Extra City.
Around the corner in the next hall Stigter Van Doesberg show a fearless combination of Peggy Franck and Tjebbe Beekman. It looks like they had fun to put it together and that’s compliment to the works.
Throughout the fair is the chapter Solo with galleries setting up marked spaces for one artist’s modest presentation. Where Levi van Veluw’s solo at Ron Mandos isn’t exactly modest – and therefore no less impressive – István Csákány’s presentation at Galerie Krinzinger is concise and stunningly crafted that offers a bit of rest in the fair even though it could have been allowed more space.
Also spread over the halls of the fair is a new section called Rediscover which has fourteen galleries showing the work of artists from the historic avant garde who have been overlooked or forgotten somewhat. Gordon Parks photographs of the Deep South of 1950’s America, at Gordon Parks gallery, are a striking moment in this new offer.
Thorsten Brinkmann at Hopstreet could almost be called a soloshow in the way it pronounces itself as a theatre stage-like setting caught in a moment of colourful and constructed madness.
Perhaps the most impressive additions to this year’s fair just outside its main halls is the exhibition Cabinet d’Ami: The Accidental Collection of Jan Hoet curated by Katerina Gregos and whose scenography was done by Richard Venlet. That last is worth noting because the show has the visitor feel enveloped in a beautiful collection of small gestures, correspondences, photos and little works all collected by Jan Hoet, or in fact given to him as a gift over the many years and long relationships he had with some of the artists he worked with. Hoet, in turn, often also donated to his museum (such as a beautiful painting of a torso by Luc Tuymans).
The exhibition comes with its own public program of talks throughout the days of the fair with speakers such as Philipe Van Cauteren, Koen Brams and Pieternel Vermoortel. Gregos had access to the entire archive and the result is a reason to walk straight to the other end of the fair and start your visit there. It then becomes a reminder of an artworld of generosity and contribution that I happily took along with me on the long and slow-paced walk back to the entrance/exit. That is if one of the HISK’s terrible karaoke songs isn’t wormed into your head.
Huib Haye van der Werf
