COLLECTIBLE 2018: Spazio Nobile

The first edition of the COLLECTIBLE fair opens today for the trade audience at the Vanderborght building in Brussels –it opens tomorrow to the public. TL Magazine’s sister gallery, Spazio Nobile, is presenting an exciting selection of unique pieces under an umbrella called Phantasmagoria. The exhibition ranges from tapestries to lighting, from photographies to the unclassifiable.

Here’s what the Spazio Nobile team had to say about Phantasmagoria.

TLmag: Which artists and designers are you featuring at COLLECTIBLE?
Spazio Nobile: We have chosen to work with eight designers and photographers who share artistic and explorative qualities. There’s Kaspar Hamacher from Eupen in Belgium, Chen & Williams from Brooklyn, Bela Silva from Lisbon-Brussels, Amsterdam-based Finn Kustaa Saksi, Antwerp’s Frederik Vercruysse, Laetitia Bica from Brussels-Liège, Rotterdam-based Belgian Isaac Monté and Alexia de Ville, from Brussels.

It’s the first time we’re showcasing Kustaa Saksi’s tapestries. We have now started a long-term collaboration with him bot at the gallery and for fairs we’d like to participate in the near future. Laetitia Bica and Alexia de Ville are also new at the gallery –and they’re working on an installation project at Spazio Nobile in 2019. By discovering new talents and coupling emerging and established artists, we can further explore new territories of creation. We’re also very interested in the mixed media that are part of the contemporary applied arts, at the fringe of design and fine arts.

TLmag: Is there a theme to your selection?
Spazio Nobile: Our booth on the second floor of the Vanderborght follows the theme of Phantasmagoria. We wanted to play with this colourful, organic and mineral world of wonders. The scenography done by Louisa Vermoere acts like a grid that adds a new subtle layer to Richard Venlet’s overall scenography in the building, and creates a very captivating visual twist: it looks like a forest directed towards the sea.

On one side you have the lighting installation by Chen & Williams combined with the sparkling Zhé wallpaper designed by Alexia de Ville. This allows the visitor to explore the space between the crystallised steel shots and the lighting effect coming out from them –and, on the other side, the Atlantic series of photographs by Frederik Vercruysse. In front of it you can see Gold, a surreal photograph by Laetitia Bica next to the Garden by Frederik Vercruysse, also playing on the impression of the colour behind a frosted glass. Appearing as a surreal and sculptural installation within this space, the seven tapestries designed by Kustaa Saksi create a colourful and phantasmagoric landscape –and their tactility is very impressive… please experience that if you visit us! Saksi’s view of the transformation of nature into textiles that are woven like paintings expresses a very intense and unique visualisation of all kind of allegories. Those tapestries, hanging from the ceiling, are interacting with the vertical and horizontal setup of the sculptural furniture and pieces by Hamacher –refined and chiseled, sometimes burnt from the inside or fully on their surface. Then there’s the rich and sophisticated stonewares by Bela Silva and the silvered Caviar Sconces by Chen & Williams. And we also have a special-edition object: the Crystallised SL58 Chair by Isaac Monté, launched in 2018 in collaboration with BULO, celebrating the sixtieth anniversary (Diamond Jubileum) of the iconic chair by Leon Stijnen, released for the World Expo in Brussels in 1958.

TLmag: Why do you think collectible design is such an important force right now?
Spazio Nobile: COLLECTIBLE acts at the fringe between contemporary art, applied arts and design and put all the main players together under one single roof. The Vanderborght building has the great karma required for such an initiative, which is both cultural and commercial.

COLLECTIBLE is the first fair entirely dedicated to 21st-century design. Even though we were not alive at the time of La Libre Esthétique in Brussels in the late 19th century, before Henry Van de Velde left Brussels for Weimar and initiated the Bauhaus and after that, La Cambre Visual Arts and Architecture School, we feel that we are entering a new kind of era. The artists, designers, gallerists, media, museums and cultural institutions are positioning themselves differently. Social media has been such an influence on the way to promote and sell directly to potential collectors. How can we reinvent the role of the gallerist in the 21st century? As curators and managers of both Spazio Nobile and TLmag –which we’ve been publishing since 2008–, we’d like the community of art and design to be much more open to dialogue and cooperations. Globalisation has reached its peak, and it’s therefore great to see Brussels coming back to the roots of what design is and how it can interact with art and the creative scenes. You cannot really find an open platform such as this one in Paris, New York or London. In terms of collectors, the Capital of Europe is ideally located and offers more advantages for investors and real lovers of art and design.

TLmag: Why did you decide to participate in COLLECTIBLE?
Spazio Nobile: We believe in this open platform to promote both emerging talents and renowned artists, designers and photographers. Brussels can be a key player as the right spot to showcase emerging and highly creative designers and artists. This mix-and-match of the design-led or the artistic-led is not so much of a problem for us. We like the idea of the fringe, the frontier, the frame. This is our playground, but it also requires a high level of entrepreneurship and risk. COLLECTIBLE appears as a supporter of what we’re trying to create right now: a new kind of experience, very intense and immersive both for the general audience and the collectors who are looking for the new and surprising feel and touch.

Spazio Nobile is an emerging gallery that has the vocation to highlight the talents in the field of contemporary applied arts, design and photography. The narrative is key for us, but we also focus on the bespoke dimension of each creation. We think that the dialogue with the collector, the phase of the process and pre-production and production are key for success. We like to be involved into this creative phase from the idea to the tangible object. We also appreciate the poetry and “wild thing,” to quote Hilde Bouchez, that each object or installation can bring to our mind and soul. We cannot just sell products. Art and design pieces always have this supplément d’âme. This is a form of generosity that is maybe invisible for many of us, yet it is key to learn to see, capture and appreciate.

Finally, we like the idea of Vanderborght –the building itself– as a very modern and contemporary frame offered to the exhibitors and visitors, which can easily be transformed into a temporary installation of art and design over the five levels connected through a beautiful atrium full of bright light. We hope people experience it as something fresh and totally new.

EVENT: SATURDAY, MARCH 10
Lunch & Prosecco at the ‘bel étage’ of Spazio Nobile Gallery within Die Werkstatt, Sculptural Furniture Design & Photography

Lise Coirier and Gian Giuseppe Simeone welcome you at Die Werkstatt, an exhibition of contemporary sculptural furniture and photography in presence of the designers and photographer Damien Gernay, Kaspar Hamacher, Jonas Loellmann, Valentin Loellmann and Fabian von Spreckelsen. Located in thedynamic and cosmopolitan Ixelles neighbourhood of Brussels,
Spazio Nobile has initiated since April 2016 a fruitful dialogue between contemporary applied arts, design and photography. Commissioning unique pieces, limited editions and installations that are both experimental and artistic, with a particular sensibility to everything nature and minerality, the gallery organises four to five exhibits each year, dedicated to local and international rising and established talents, without creating borders between the disciplines, the visual arts dialoguing with the fine arts.

Address: Rue Franz Merjay, 142 – 1050 Brussels

Note: During COLLECTIBLE, Spazio Nobile is open from Wednesday 7 until Sunday 11 March from 11 am until 6 pm. Due to limited space, reservations for the lunch are mandatory. Transport is not provided.

COLLECTIBLE, a new fair devoted exclusively to 21st century collectible design, is taking place until March 11 in the Vanderborght building