“At art fairs, people look too quickly,” says Jason Poirier dit Caulier, the founder and director of the Plus-One Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. “Here they need a little more time. They almost want to touch,” he added.
Poirier dit Caulier stood in a branch of his dealer, in front of an ingenious illusionistic painting by Belgian artist Ritsart Gobyn, 37, which garnered much admiration up close during Antwerp Art Weekend, an annual celebration of the city’s contemporary artists and artists. gallery owners who decided on Sunday.
Although Gobyn’s artwork looked like a bare canvas with strips of masking tape and excerpts from art books glued to it, it was in fact a highly detailed two-dimensional oil painting, shown with 26 similar works in ‘Prologue’, a solo exhibition that was part of the Art Weekend program.
The show turned out to be a commercial hit. At least 25 of the oil paintings, which put a contemporary twist on Northern Europe’s age-old tradition of trompe l’oeil (“trick the eye”) painting, found buyers at prices ranging from €3,000 to €13,000, about $3,250 to $14,000 said the gallery.
“There are many good young artists in Belgium. Our role is to promote them,” said Poirier dit Caulier.
Antwerp and other cultural hubs such as Barcelona, Zurich, Madrid, Mexico City and London are trying to emulate the success of Gallery Weekend Berlin by convincing contemporary art aficionados that following a trail of dealer exhibitions is a more relaxing and educational alternative is for the crowds – burly of a fairground.
Thirty-nine commercial galleries took part in Antwerp’s ninth annual art weekend, including big names such as Axel Vervoordt and Zeno X. Yet Antwerp does not have a huge dealer base and far fewer artists live in the city compared to Berlin. However, Belgium has a reputation for being the country with the world’s highest percentage of collectors per capita. (It doesn’t help having to pay capital gains tax on art sales.)
“We have an incredible tradition of collecting that goes all the way back to Rubens and Breughel,” says Tim Van Laere, a former professional tennis player who has run his eponymous gallery in Antwerp since 1997. “We have collectors at so many different levels,” he said, adding that unlike many collectors in other countries, Belgians like to make their own decisions rather than relying on expert advisors.
“They buy with their feelings,” says Van Laere.
Instead of exhibiting an artist from his stable of internationally established names, Van Laere surprised during Antwerp Art Weekend by transferring his more than 10,000 square meter gallery to panel paintings by Inès van den Kieboom, 92, a self-taught Belgian artist whose work he had recently discovered in a small antique shop.
Priced from €1,500 to €28,000, Van den Kieboom’s direct, smile-inducing portraits of family members and friends engaged in everyday activities, such as going to the beach, also proved popular. By Sunday, according to the gallery, 54 of the 59 available works had been sold, about a third to international clients.
At the other end of the age spectrum, young Belgian artists Ben Sledsens, 31, (represented by Van Laere) and Bendt Eyckermans, 29, (represented by neighboring gallery owner Sofie Van de Velde) are two of the hottest names in the international art market .
Sledsens and Eyckermans both live in Antwerp and were educated at the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, which has produced many of Belgium’s brightest art and design stars. Both make figurative paintings with a dreamy, surreal edge. Both have more than 500 collectors waiting to purchase their works, according to their dealers. Yet none of their paintings were available on participating gallery walls during Art Weekend.
“You have to know the gallery and be on the list,” says Christophe Ysewyn, 38, a collector and hotelier in Antwerp. Ysewyn said he was lucky enough to have acquired a painting by Sledsens early in the artist’s career. “I have been approached many times by Asian collectors who want to buy my work,” he said.
Ysewyn’s collection and property have benefited from Antwerp’s renewed importance as an arts centre. Since the Renaissance, Brussels and Antwerp have been the two most important artistic centers of the country. In the early 2000s, as the art market grew, a number of international galleries set up branches in Brussels. But Brussels’ appeal as a destination for the art world was tarnished by terrorist attacks in 2016 and the closure in 2019 of the Brussels edition of the highly regarded Independent Art Fair.
Since then, some Belgian gallerists, such as Office Baroque, have moved from Brussels to Antwerp.
“The art scene was here, then it moved to Brussels and now it’s coming back,” said Ysewyn.
But the Antwerp art scene has its challenges. City Hall recently cut funding for contemporary artists after spending €105 million on an 11-year renovation of the city’s tourist-attractive Royal Museum of Fine Arts. This institution has an excellent collection of masterpieces by Rubens, the Antwerp prodigy who became the most successful artist in early 17th-century Europe.
“The art market has not changed since the time of Rubens. Painting is the battlefield,” says Luc Haenen, an Antwerp heart surgeon with a penchant for a Dries Van Noten suit. One of Belgium’s quintessential contemporary art collectors, Haenen said he bought paintings from now-in-demand artists like Issy Wood and Caroline Walker long before they became fashionable.
A native of Antwerp, Haenen said his city was a logical location for the format of the gallery weekend: “It’s not too expensive, there are a lot of young people and there’s a vibrant gallery scene,” he said. “And we are spoiled for mobility,” he added, referring to Antwerp’s convenient travel links to European capitals.
But surely a lot must have changed in the 400 years since Rubens was Antwerp’s megastar artist? Or maybe not. Rubens also had a fairly long waiting list.
