valerie_traan gallery
photo by Bart Kiggen
The gallery (2010) situated in Antwerp’s historical center is a lively meeting point for art, architecture and the daily object. Since its beginning, the gallery has pushed the boundaries between different domains by commissioning exhibitions from a variety of artists. Seeking for creators with a strong, empathic content and a sense of imperfection. Artists who work in cross-genre, leaving their comfort zones by mixing disciplines in order to transform, reconstruct and find beauty in ordinariness and in the daily.
The question whether or not it is art, design or architecture is irrelevant within the interdisciplinary scope of the gallery. This attitude is also reflected in the physical set-up of the gallery: as an extension of her home, gallery director Veerle Wenes even made every private room part of an ever-changing set-up.
“A place for encounters,
for things and themes,
for functionality and subjectivity,
for exhibiting and living.
Pushing the boundaries between art, design and architecture,
between public and private space”
I opened the gallery to meet people, to create things, new concepts, new exhibitions, new encounters, so in a way it was to create a new way of life. (Veerle Wenes)
valerie_traan gallery is a member of Antwerp Art, connecting the contemporary art scene in Antwerp.
valerie_troost gallery - a valerie_traan dependance
valerie_troost gallery in Ostend develops its program in collaboration with the Antwerp-based valerie_traan gallery, where gallery owner Veerle Wenes continues to explore the relationship between art, architecture, and the everyday. At both galleries she delves into the interaction between the aesthetic on one hand and the stories, meanings, interactions, and frictions that shape society on the other.
valerie_troost gallery pays special attention to the relationships that the artwork enters into with the spatial context in which it is displayed, and with the people and things with which it shares that space—producing an infectious tension between concept and material; between the concrete presence of a work and the way in which it stimulates the imagination by generating possible meanings.