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 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 program. 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-caliber exhibitions and performances. In addition, there are 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.
Find a taster of what to expect below:
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.
Date: 03/09/2020 until 27/09/2020
Location: Botanique
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
Date: 03/09/2020 until 17/01/2020
Location: CENTRALE for Contemporary Art
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.
Date: 03/09/2020 until 17/01/2021
Location: iMAL
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.
Date: 04/09/2020 until 17/10/2020
Location: The CLEARING Gallery and the Van Buuren Museum
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.
Date: 03/09/2020 until 28/11/2020
Location: La Loge
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.
Date: 11/09/2020 until 10/01/2021
Location: Wiels
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.
Date: 11/09/2020 until 07/02/2021
Location: The Jewish Museum
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.
Date: 24/09/2020 until 10/01/2021
Location: BOZAR
More information about these events on www.agenda.brussels
