A few notes from two art-filled days in Brussels
A mustard yellow crane hangs over the humming Avenue Louise in Brussels, its lanky structure filling the view of the window in the hotel room where I am sitting, attempting to write this report. Despite news that tourism is lagging and hotels are struggling after recent events here, the city feels bustling, traffic-laden and in the midst of transformation, and at the same time, still a place of neighborhoods and corner cafes. There is certainly a cacophony of visual stimuli this week, for the contemporary art minded. Alongside the main fair, there is the newly arrived Independent, the 5th iteration of POPPOSISTIONS, two fantastic solo exhibitions at WIELS, and myriad other events and exhibitions to take in.
Independent Brussels, the inaugural Belgian edition of Independent, which began in 2010 in New York, took up residence this week at the 50,000-square-foot Vanderborght Building in the center of the city. Designed by architectural firm Hub, Antwerp, the fair aims to follow the format and quality of an exhibition rather than a traditional fair, and so far, it looks to be pushing that boundary, though perhaps not overcoming it. The space is open and bright, with a large atrium enveloped in its 5 floors.
The airy feeling and circular architecture, combined with the exhibition design that comfortably mingles and blurs the gallery booths, seems an ideal match for the visually-overloaded wanderings of the art fair attendee, possibly further disoriented by the unpleasant aftereffects of last night’s reverie. Independent was conceived by gallerists Elizabeth Dee and Darren Flook, and claims itself as “part consortium, part collective” that “lies somewhere between a collective exhibition and a reexamination of the art fair model, reflecting the changing attitudes and growing challenges for artists, galleries, curators and collectors.”
The fair is bursting with strong presentations from a number of galleries. Here is a small smattering of what caught my eye:
- A beautiful and thoughtful pairing of Doug Ashford’s Next Day (2015 – 2016) (which offers an emotional appraisal of the press coverage of 9/11 attacks through the lens of colorful abstraction) and Moyra Davey’s mailers project (in which Davey folds C-prints into the shape of an envelope and sends them to friends and collaborators), here displayed as a triptych, Oozing Wall (Rémy), 2014 in Wilifred Lentz’s space stole the show for me.
- A quiet and goofy solo presentation of Jirí Kovanda at gb agency’s space, primarily of works on paper and a shelf sculpture was also an wonderful unexpected surprise in the art fair setting.
- After a walk at both Independent and the main fair, clearly textiles are in – at least within the commercial gallery realm. All the nicer then, to visit kaufmann repetto’s space here and see work by Pae White, who has longed ignored the notions of disciplinary bounding.
Another textile-oriented presentation was this quirky installation by Sao Paulo-based Ana Mazzei at Galeria Jacqueline Martins.
There was lots, or more accurately, too much to see, but a few other gems were:
- Matts Leiderstram’s presentation of The Connoisseur’s Eye, 2014 at Andrehn-Schiptjenko
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The takeover of Almine Rech Gallery’s space by blog and curatorial project Le Salon with its research driven installation of cat interior design and sculptures.
- An unusual collaborative project of Galerie Jocelyn Wolff and Cahn International and artist Guillaume Leblon. The exhibition design was created by Guillaume Leblon, and combined the display of antiquities from Cahn International and a number of contemporary artists from Joceyln Wolff’s roster.
In its 5th year, POPPOSITIONS is conceived as an experiment with the art fair format, offering an assemblage of presentations from galleries and not-for-profit spaces. This year’s edition took “The Wrong Side” of the art market as its theme and tagline, positioning itself with the notion of borders, how they are drawn and what can qualify as transgressive practices today. The fair moves each year – this edition is situated in a former laundry in the now internationally known neighborhood of Molenbeek. Two projects I want to learn more about after seeing iterations of them here at POPPOSITIONS are:
- A project by Tallinn-based artist Marge Monko presented by Lugemik, a bookshop and publisher in the same city. Don’t wind it up, turn it on considers the commodity fetishism and advert choreography of wristwatches. The project includes a publication, an installation of staged images, and a performance of hand choreography daily at 18:30
- An installation from Mohammed Laouli and Katrin Ströbel titled frontières fluides – fluid boundaries, which looks at migration and the concomitant politics and colonialism between Europe and Northern Africa though the very real space of a temporary shelter built on a boat. The project takes the notion of passages and nomadic life as a form to consider, particularly in regards to our agency (or lack thereof) in displacement and the role of the sea in the human efforts to migrate and wander.
I’m off now to one last performance, after which I will add a few last highlights!
Angela Jerardi
