DAVID SPENDER PHOTO
Design
Bruxelles ma belle
SPRING HAD ONLY JUST BEGUN when a cold chill took hold in Brussels: on March 22 the city was hit by two terrorist attacks. Bombs went off at the airport and the subway, with more than thirty casualties and numerous injured citizens. Panic, fear, and anger ensued. And sadness, too, symbolically expressed with chalk drawings on the street. The people of Brussels responded with a call for solidarity and peace. And with the request to see not only Brussels’s problematic districts, but also its beauty.
“Bruxelles ma belle” (#bxlmabelle) was one of the many slogans that were chanted on the streets: Brussels, my beauty. National newspapers gave away tickets for concerts and the theater, to museums and exhibitions. The government awarded money to the best ideas for elevating the city’s image. Businesses also invested—just before summer the four limitededition design dealers discussed below either opened galleries for the first time (Atelier Jespers and Piano Nobile) or moved to new locations (Victor Hunt and Maniera). For existing galleries the move was a reinvestment in what was previously a calculated experiment; for brand new galleries it was a step into the unknown. But in all cases, these moves radiate hope. And confidence.
These gallerists believe in their city and in their specific place between art and more traditional objects and furniture design. “Applied art and limited-edition design are a less speculative market than that of art,” says Lise Coirier of Piano Nobile. “This kind of design is absolutely of this time,” adds Victor Hunt’s Alexis Ryngaert. But the bottom line is this: these Brussels gallerists all work with national and international artists, architects, craftsmen, and designers, and each delivers unique and diverse objects—spectacular or controversial, subtly poetic or simply full of theoretical baggage, and, of course, with some Belgian surrealism, too.
Like so many inhabitants of Brussels, they dare to experiment. They try out and analyze. But they keep moving—just like their city.
Located between the Place Royale and the Place d’Albertine in the center of Brussels, the Mont des Arts offers beautiful city views and features an equestrian statue of Albert I of Belgium. | DAVID SPENDER PHOTO
Atelier Jespers
Atelier Jespers, the former workshop of sculptor Oscar Jespers, is now home to Jean François Declercq’s “centre d’art,” where he showcases contemporary designers such as Ben Storms and Casimir. | © SERGE ANTON PHOTOGRAPH
IN 2014 JEAN-FRANÇOIS DECLERCQ, a connoisseur of the work of Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, and other French vintage designers, who spends half his time in Paris, became the owner of Atelier Jespers—the “creating machine” built in Brussels in 1928 by the architect Victor Bourgeois for his friend and La Cambre colleague, sculptor Oscar Jespers (the workshop was operational until Jespers’s death in 1970). Declercq prefers to describe the place as a <em>centre d’art</em> rather than a gallery. “Initially my intention was to just live in this modernist gem,” he says, “but it was built in the first place for sculpture, not as a residence. At the end of the 1920s, it was a prime meeting place for Europe’s artistic avant-garde. It’s a magical place, but a bit difficult to live in. I repainted it and left it as empty as possible.”
Declercq is an expert in vintage design, but, he says, “I didn’t want to use the house for exhibiting vintage. And I do follow contemporary design a bit. At the Milan Design Fair I saw a table by Ben Storms and immediately fell in love with it. It’s perfect as a mirror, it’s perfect as a table, and even the trestles are perfect and beautiful. We talked, but that was it. But when a magazine wanted to shoot my interior, I called Ben to ask if I could borrow his table. His friend Gerard Kuijpers came along to help carry it inside. After an hour I liked them and their way of working so much that I asked them to make an exhibition. This house was made for exhibitions! It’s fate.
“In Paris people say that Brussels is the new Berlin. It’s very happening. For Parisians it’s cheap—leading to a strong French creative community moving here—plus you can be in London in two hours, and in Paris and Cologne in an hour and a half. Of course we have felt the repercussions of the attacks in Paris. But the city fairly quickly returned to ‘normal’ and the same is true for Brussels. People sort of forget, and the fear doesn’t last. Thank goodness.”
In September Atelier Jespers will show the work of contemporary furniture maker Casimir. atelierjespers.com
Exhibited on the mezzanine, Ben Storms’s InHale tables are composed of salvaged pieces of marble resting on inflated metal cushions. | ©ATELIER JESPERS
