65 openings, zero chill: dispatch from Brussels

Brussels always felt like a bit of a mystery to me. I’d visited a couple of times in the past, but never stayed long enough to really figure it out. This time was different. Curators Laure Decock and Evelyn Simons invited me to join the first full edition of Brussels Art Week, AKA RendezVous, their baby. 65 venues opening at once after the summer break: galleries, public institutions, private foundations, auction houses, and artist-run initiatives. The idea was irresistible: start the autumn with a bang.

Laure and Evelyn even had a manifesto, which made me smile but also stuck with me: “Brussels is a unique place. Conveniently central, discreetly humble — surrounded by big sisters like London and Paris, yet brimming with a creative energy that is ferocious. A metropolis where perfumed fur coats rustle against grimy leather rave jackets, where day meets night just as Magritte imagined it…” Reading it, I thought ‘yes, this is the Brussels I want to see’. So I set out to explore, one neighbourhood per day.

Day 1 – Shelter in the storm

The week started with rain. Not drizzle, proper buckets. I dashed into The Tip Inn, a temporary bar conceived by British artist Zoe Williams. We had collaborated before but never met, so I introduced myself while leaning against satin curtains and candlelit tables. The whole place looked like a mash-up of a tavern, an installation, and a nightclub. On the wall hung a giant print of the 16th-century Prodigal Son by Jan Sanders van Hemessen partying with prostitutes and gamblers, setting the mood.

Zoe told me she sees bars as symbols of community, decadence and escape. Food was presented like sculpture: sausages and buns strung up like garlands. A video loop showed a girl casually pissing among glasses of champagne. Instead of champagne, we ordered the signature whiskey-Montenegro cocktail. A DJ was spinning, artists were gossiping — Marina Abramović sightings, funding drama, someone’s wild night out. I spotted a lighter on the bar that read “Can I show you my portfolio?” Brussels humour at its best.

Day 2 – Downtown discoveries

The next morning was chilly, autumn was in the air. I headed to Galerie Christophe Gaillard, where Hélène Delprat was showing in Belgium for the first time. She greeted me in shorts and high socks, her trademark look, and walked me through her new paintings and ceramics alongside never-before-shown gouaches from the late ’90s. She had stopped exhibiting for almost twenty years, and these works carried that sense of rupture. Cynical, bold, a little mocking. She compared it to Magritte’s mischievous période vache, when he painted in a rough, garish style to rebel against surrealist orthodoxy.

At Galerie Greta Meert, I found a surprise: a preview of James White’s Indoor Nature, which will go live in an online viewing room in mid-September. His photorealistic paintings on aluminium showed intimate domestic interiors where plants quietly invaded the scene. From afar they looked like photographs; up close, the brushwork revealed itself, though barely. The aluminium gave them a cool glow. Clinical but tender at the same time.

That evening everyone gathered at the freshly opened Standard Hotel, twenty-eight floors up. Cocktails, tiny plates by chefs Jean Fonsny and Alex Joseph, panoramic views. This was Brussels’ art crowd at full rentrée mode, catching up after summer like school kids on the first day back.

Day 3 – Uptown strolls

The sun finally came out. I wandered Ixelles, where La Loge, once a Masonic temple, was hosting Inas Halabi’s ‘All That Remains’. The exhibition combined sound and moving image, exploring Israeli national parks built on top of destroyed Palestinian villages. Visitors could sip tea brewed from thyme, hyssop, or sage. On a table lay a book that caught my eye: Flowers of Palestine, an 1870s illustrated volume introduced by poet Mahmoud Darwish. Pages filled with delicate plants felt like a quiet protest, rootedness on paper.

At Stems Gallery, Nick Doyle was showing ‘Mirage’, his take on the American landscape myth, made entirely of denim. He used bleaching and acid-washing to shape clouds, deserts, horizons. My favourite work, Barrier to Entry, took an Albert Bierstadt painting and placed it behind a chain-link fence. A perfect image of utopia-turned-private property. Doyle was there in person, warm and chatty, and handed me a signed catalog before I left.

All that walking made me hungry. In Belgium, the solution is obvious: moules-frites. Did you know the Belgians go through nearly 30,000 tonnes of mussels a year? I happily added my portion.

Next stop: Le Bailli, where Galerie Conradi had filled the bright vitrine-like space with Thomas Jeppe’s luminous canvases in yellows and blues. Dealer Heiner Conradi and I sat there for almost an hour. We talked first about the layered history of the arcade with its laundromats, antique dealers, and vintage pop-ups. Then the conversation moved easily to upcoming fairs, half-formed ideas and dream projects. Somehow it felt like I’d known him forever.

Day 4 – Midtown finale

On my last day, I explored Midtown. Sorry We’re Closed occupies a vast 19th-century mansion, the kind of place where you look up at the ceilings as much as the art. Artist Adrien Vescovi welcomed me, explaining how he dyes old linens — embroidered tablecloths, monogrammed sheets — using natural pigments and the sun itself. He then stitches them into lunar and arch-like patterns. Vescovi spoke of mantras and crescents, alchemical processes, slow rhythms. His fabrics hung from chains and soaked in the light, soft yet monumental.

At WIELS, I saw ‘Magical Realism: Imagining Natural Dis/order’, curated by Sofia Dati, Helena Kritis, and Dirk Snauwaert. Thirty artists, mostly women, weaving myth and dream to respond to climate and precarity. Gaëlle Choisne’s Ego, he goes was unforgettable: a talking fridge filled with rotting goods, addressing our wasteful culture with humour and rage, drawing on Creole traditions of visible and invisible worlds.

The week closed at Les Passagées, set in the old home of painter Eugène Broerman. Inside, rehearsals were underway for My Ström, a collective performance involving visual artist Charlotte Charbonnel, choreographer Gilles Polet, pianist Barbara Drazkov, and even Michelin-starred chef Hugo Roellinger, among others. I can’t reveal much — it premieres in December — but it’s about the body as river, whirlpool, wave. Out in the beautiful garden, Alexandra Swenden, the project’s creative director, offered seafood soup and North Sea shrimp snacks while talking about care: how art can feed body and soul at once.

A city that lingers

I nearly missed my flight, clutching my last dark beer as I dashed to the airport. On the plane I thought about the week: a fridge that spoke, a chain-link fence that cut through paradise, a lighter that asked about portfolios, mussels by the tonne. Somehow all these fragments fit together, like Brussels itself.

RendezVous wasn’t just an art week. It was a mood, a tempo, a way of stepping back into the season with eyes wide open. Brussels proved itself a city of contradictions: discreet yet bold, chaotic yet generous, unassuming yet restless. What tied it all together was an enduring avant-garde spirit, running through the city like a current.

I came looking for highlights and left with a feeling of belonging. And yes, I want to RendezVous again soon.