At Art Brussels 2023, Emerging Artists and Rediscovered Masters Shine
Installation view of Division of Labour and TJ Boulting’s booth at Art Brussels, 2023. Courtesy of Division of Labour and TJ Boulting.
Art Brussels is a fair much like the city it occupies. Perhaps not as iconic or flashy as Paris, New York, or London, Brussels is, nonetheless, a plucky, punchy European capital that refuses to be passed over or cede its cultural centrality to the European art world.
Two years after the pandemic forced the 55-year-old fair to adopt a clumsy hybrid of online sales and a city-wide gallery crawl, Art Brussels has triumphantly returned to Brussels Expo, also known as the Palace of Exhibitions—an imposing, almost Stalinist, Art Deco tower perched upon the Heysel Plateau, on the northern outskirts of the city. From its sprawling terraced emmarchement, visitors on the doorstep of the fair can look back upon a sweeping vista of the verdant surrounding park with the city’s iconic Atomium looming large in the distance.
The fact that this impressive setting is quickly put out of a visitor’s mind is a testament to the quality and vitality of the works on display inside. This year’s edition presents 152 galleries from 32 countries with more than 800 artists on display. Booths are divided into five unequally sized sections: Prime, Solo, Discovery, Rediscovery, and Artistic Project.
Marcin Dudek, The Union, 2023, Harlan Levey Projects.
The vast majority of exhibitors are in the Prime category, and deliver the familiar formula of presenting a cross-section of works by represented artists. One such example is Harlan Levey Projects, which shows a pair of beautiful works by Marcin Dudek that were burnt, lacerated, and then painstakingly stitched back together with surgical tape. Also on display are a trio of intricate hand-drawn ink works by Amelie Bouvier, a couple of delicate bronze casts of toxic Israeli flora from Ella Littwitz, and a high-tech diptych by Emmanuel Van der Auwera.
This last piece shows an image of what appears to be a military drone strike, thus introducing a surprisingly persistent theme of war and geopolitics that prevails in many booths at the fair.
One example is found at the booth of Budapest-based Ani Molnár Gallery, within a dense composition of blue porcelain plates by Carlos Aires, Telediario VI (2019), which depicts armed soldiers bearing the flags of various countries, homeless people, and grieving war victims.
