BRUSSELS.- Art Brussels announced the participants of its 34th edition; the first to take place at the fair’s spectacular new location, Tour & Taxis, a turn of the century former Customs House situated in Brussels’ inner city area.
The 2016 edition brings together 140 galleries from 28 countries in three main sections. The International and Discovery Committees have selected 31 newcomers in the fair. A new section, REDISCOVERY, which plays a significant role in the development of the fair’s existing ‘discovery profile’, will feature 15 galleries. It will be dedicated to art from the period between 1917 and 1987 and present important artists from the historical avant-garde that have been under-estimated, overlooked, or unduly forgotten. Among the exhibitors in this section are Timothy Taylor Gallery (London) and Galerie carlier | gebauer (Berlin), both new galleries to the fair. REDISCOVERY will also feature works by artists such as Roy DeCarava, Bob Law, Barbara & Michael Leisgen, Véra Molnar, Yuko Nasaka and Eduardo Terrazas, building a bridge between artistic practices of the present to those of the past.
PRIME will comprise 98 established galleries representing internationally established artists. Newcomers to the section include Pace Gallery (London), Galerie Peter Kilchmann (Zurich) and Ben Brown Fine Arts (London). Returning galleries include Xavier Hufkens (Brussels), Bernier/Eliades (Athens), Galleria Continua (San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins and Havana), Almine Rech (Paris, Brussels, London), Nathalie Obadia (Paris, Brussels), Axel Vervoordt (Antwerp, Hong Kong), Marlborough Contemporary (London), MOT International (London, Brussels) and Waddington Custot Galleries (London).
DISCOVERY will feature 30 galleries representing emerging artists whose work is not yet known to a wider public, including galleries such as KOW (Berlin), Barbara Seiler (Zurich) and Green Art Gallery (Dubai). For the first time this section will present booths by Temnikova & Kasela (Tallinn), Ellis King (Dublin), Château Shatto (Los Angeles), The Sunday Painter and Arcade (London), àngels (Barcelona), Document Art Gallery (Buenos Aires) and General Store (Australia) amongst others.
As always, Art Brussels continues to place emphasis on the individual presentation of artists with 24 galleries presenting projects in SOLO. Exhibitors include New Art Centre (Salisbury) with Toby Ziegler, Sorry We’re Closed (Brussels) with Yann Gerstberger, Baró (São Paulo) with David Medalla, Shoshana Wayne (Santa Monica) with Dinh Q. Lê and MOT International (Brussels, London) with Marinella Senatore.
Artistic Projects for 2016
The flagship project for Art Brussels 2016 will be an exhibition entitled 'Cabinet d’amis', with works from the collection of internationally recognised Belgian curator Jan Hoet (1936-2014) which includes artists such as Thierry De Cordier, Marlene Dumas, David Hammons, Cady Noland, Panamarenko, Luc Tuymans, Raoul De Keyser and many others to whom the curator was close.
In 1972 Hoet founded S.M.A.K, the museum of contemporary art in Ghent, Belgium. In 1986 he went on to gain international acclaim for his ground-breaking exhibition ‘Chambres d’Amis’, which featured 50 artists, each invited to create work for 50 private residencies in Ghent. Later in 1992 he was selected to curate Documenta IX in Kassel, which cemented his status as one of Belgium’s most important artworld figures within a rapidly growing international contemporary art scene.
The exhibition is organised by the fair’s Artistic Director, Katerina Gregos, in close collaboration with the family of Jan Hoet and will be on view at Hôtel de la Poste, a space within the historic site of Art Brussels’ new home Tour & Taxis.
Each year, Art Brussels selects an artist to conceive its creative campaign. The campaign for 2016 has been entrusted to OTTOMURA. OTTOMURA is a Belgian collective founded in 2010 by three photographers in order to produce work on assignment, together or individually, without it interfering with their personal photographic practice. The collective focuses on image based media with an emphasis on photography in all genres, such as exhibition documentation, fashion, photojournalism, and commercial work.
OTTOMURA’s campaign images were produced inside Art Brussels’ new venue, Tour & Taxis with a view to highlighting the features of this spectacular industrial building from 1904. The artists engaged in series of in-situ experiments with coloured smoke in the empty spaces of the building, creating an atmospheric, ethereal environment - latently expectant - which will come to life between the 21st and 24th April 2016.
