Up Next: Brussels Gallery Weekend 2017

Things have changed since the era of Brussels Art Days: now known as Brussels Gallery Weekend, the tenth anual iteration of the event is celebrating the opening of the new art season with 41 galleries and a dozen institutions, as well as artist spaces.

For four days, from September 7-10, visitors will be able to discover the work of emerging talents from Europe and beyond, as well as new pieces from established names. Here are some highlights from this year’s selection.

TRACEY EMIN
The British artist will be presenting the self-exploration The Memory of Your Touch at the Xavier Hufkens Gallery. With close to ninety works in a wide range of media —including paintings, new bronze sculptures, works on paper, neon texts and a video— the exhibition reveals the most recent developments in Emin’s intensely personal yet profoundly universal oeuvre.

KENDELL GEERS
South-African born Geers is doing a double exhibition at Rodolphe Janssen and Didier Claes’ galleries, based on the impact of African art on the European avant-garde. You can read more about AfroPunk in our upcoming interview with the artist.

TOMÁŜ LIBERTÍNY
The Slovakian artist is presenting a selection of new and recent works in Chronosophia at Spazio Nobile. The standouts? The red edition of his Honeycomb Vase, made with the help of bees, and the Brancusi-inspired Endless Column. Read more about the show in our interview with Libertíny here.

CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI
Speaking of Brancusi, the work of the late Romanian icon is on display at Vedovi Gallery, with a selection of three celebrated pieces as part of the exhibition Toward the Absolute.

BELLMER, BRAUNIG AND RONAY
At Office Baroque the work of surrealist Hans Bellmer, who passed away in 1975, comes together with Sascha Braunig’s vibrant paintings featuring dream-like scenes and the sculptures of Matthew Ronay, which mix the vocabularies of modernist abstraction and ritualistic objects.

STAMM MEETS RIETVELD
OV Project is showcasing what they call “a confrontation” between the late American painter Ted Stamm (USA, 1944 – 1984) and revered Dutch modern design pioneer Gerrit Rietveld —think of the Red Blue Chair against shaped canvases by Stamm.

RITSUE MISHIMA
Pierre Marie Giraud is hosting Cristal Blanc, an exhibition of new work by the Japanese glassmaker, whose approach melds ancient Italian glassmaking techniques with a contemporary aesthetic, and also draws up on a cross-cultural dialogue between European and Japanese sensibilities. To find out more, click here to read our piece on her process.

KOEN VANMECHELEN
The Belgian conceptual artist will be presenting his Vision of the Owl at the Galerie Valérie Bach. The exhibition starts with the use of peep-holes to go inside the binocular sight of the bird, and from then on progresses to sculptures and installations that reference mythology and shamanism. Read about one of his previous projects, this time using chickens, here.