Art Antwerp 2025

For this edition of Art Antwerp 2025, we are delighted to present a collection of exceptional and rare works by the gallery's artists. Exceptional and imposing in both size and visual impact, Bernar Venet's first tapestry is unveiled here in an international preview. Conceived by the artist as an equivalent to his 2020 sculpture ‘Ligne indéterminée’ (Undetermined Line), this work, produced in a limited edition of 20, is the result of a long process of adjustment to achieve this 3-metre-wide carpet made of wool and silk. The motif interpreted by the artist to turn this textile medium into a floor sculpture represents a collapse of lines that seem to overlap and superimpose each other, defying the laws of perspective and creating a blurring of vision in an unexpected optical effect. Finished by hand to create different thread heights, this unique work in Bernar Venet's career demonstrates the vitality of an artist who loves to reinvent the possibilities of various media. As a response to the conceptual rigour of this tapestry, we are pleased to offer a selection of historical works by Vera Molnar (1924-1923), a great pioneer since the 1960s of generative art and the relationship between art and computers.

As a counterpoint, we present the latest tapestries by Lionel Sabatté, nominated for the 2025 Marcel Duchamp Prize. Through this extraordinary creation, he reinvents the very idea of a classical technique by enhancing the weaving with acrylic-painted figures and a play of added threads forming knots that resemble a fantastical bestiary. The ensemble is completed by drawings on paper in which he deploys a whole imaginary world playing on the intertwining of motifs. This same distanced relationship with the foundations of Western art is found in Gilles Pourtier's marble sculptures. Like masks from a primitive civilisation, these works also assert their close relationship with the industrial aesthetics that surround us in everyday life. Finally, following her impressive exhibition this summer at the Domaine de Chaumont sur Loire and foreshadowing her upcoming retrospective at the Frac d'Amiens, Claire Trotignon presents her latest collages based on old drawings and engravings. These landscapes, where emptiness reigns supreme, display a series of ruins that seem to belong as much to the most ancient past as to a future that is already obsolete. The presentation is complemented by a new series of drawings by the Sœurs Chevalme. This artist duo, residents of Villa Albertine in the USA, develops a committed multidisciplinary practice that questions the relationship between Western and African culture.