COLLECTIBLE, the international fair for 21st-century collectible design, has announced its sixth edition running from 9th to 12th March in a new landmark venue: the Sheds of Tour & Taxis in Brussels.
The only international platform bringing together the best in contemporary collectible design, COLLECTIBLE features a curated selection of established and emerging galleries, design studios, and architects. A global highlight in which visitors can witness design history in the making, the fair strives to only showcase high-quality and well-researched objects which reflect the latest currents, with a strong focus on premieres, unique pieces, bespoke commissions and limited editions.
The fair’s participants are gathered by a distinguished selection committee spanning the worldwide design and creative sectors, namely Michelin 2-star chef and owner Nick Bril (Belgium); General Director of the MAK Museum in Vienna Lilli Hollein (Austria); architect and designer Glenn Sestig (Belgium); and Vice-Chancellor of the London Royal College of Art Dr Paul Thomson (UK).
Expanding with new endeavours, COLLECTIBLE holds its 6th edition in the industrial heritage building Tour & Taxis in Brussels, inviting PAF atelier to design its public areas, and Studio Volfram to develop an innovative booth composition.
NEW SECTIONS
To mark its 6th edition, COLLECTIBLE launches three new sections. NEW GARDE will put forward the best of recently launched new galleries, designers and collectives. ARCHITECT <=> DESIGNER will be solely dedicated to architects and interior designers selected by Nicolas Schuybroek, who will showcase recently developed furniture pieces. DIALOGUE section, curated by Jean-François Declerq invites galleries to show works from the 80ies and 90ies in dialogue with contemporary pieces.
This year’s CURATED section will be led by international designer and artist Leo Orta. ‘What is your story?’ will focus on the collaborations that a new generation of creators are building together to restore and empower a collective force of creativity from the grassroots.
Special projects will include the Bettencourt-Schueller Foundation’s Les Lauréats de l’Intelligence de la Main®; RADO Watches in collaboration with Haberli; and Loewe Foundation which will reveal the Room, their online platform showcasing the works of all artists nominated to receive the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize.
Special furniture collaborations include OHM, the collectible stools manufacturer, who will create distinctive seating for the fair; Ecobirdy who will create children’s furniture out of recycled plastic toys for the Kids corner; and Ief Spincemaille which will contribute large-scale collectible rope furniture to compliment the general scenography of the fair. AFC Collection will offer a special design consultancy service while launching a new bespoke piece of furniture.
Featuring a carefully curated selection of pieces at the confluence of design, architecture and art, COLLECTIBLE 2023’s Main Section welcomes new exhibitors such as Etage Projects (Copenhagen), Galerie VIVID (Rotterdam), St Vincents (Antwerp) Galerie MiniMasterpiece (Paris), Radford Gallery (London), and Sinople (Paris), among returning galleries such as Objects with Narratives (Brussels), Mia Karlova Galerie (Amsterdam), The Frozen Fountain (Amsterdam), Puls (Brussels) and TABLEAU (Copenhagen).
The Copenhagen-based international gallery Etage Projects will participate for the first time in COLLECTIBLE and present Anna Aagaard Jensen’s work, which examines the act of dining exploring surreal eating habits. Founded in 1999 in Rotterdam, internationally acclaimed Galerie VIVID will participate in COLLECTIBLE for the first time this year with pieces of Armenian-born designer Noro Khachatryan.
A new gallery from London launched in 2021, the Radford Gallery, eponymous to Max Radford interior designer and gallerist will bring a solo show of Lewis Kemmenoe. The gallery was set to forge an honest, democratic and supportive space for makers and emerging artists and is part of the new landscape of British galleries dedicated to cutting-edge functional art.
SELECTION
Created in 2012 by Esther de Beaucé, Galerie MiniMasterpiece will present a selection of 40 pieces of jewellery including recent collaboration with French and international artists and designers. Design gallery St Vincents founded in Antwerp curates a careful edit of furniture, art and design from niche and established creatives, designers, artists and artisans. For their first participation to the fair, they will bring new works by Lukas Cober amongst others.
Paris-based SINOPLE will present its first edition ever, a work table which has entered the French national collections, along with winners of the Grand Prix de la Création de la Ville de Paris, Design Parade Toulon or residents of the Villa Kujoyama.
Objects with Narratives premieres ‘What’s for dinner’, an immersive dining room experience featuring works by Jan Ernst, Lukas Cober, Laurids Gallée, Tim Vranken and Faina. Mia Karlova Galerie will present a pioneer of circular design: Prague-based Vadim Kibardin showcases works predominantly made with paper and cardboard waste as a sculptural medium, delving into a conscious and responsible approach to consumption.
Amsterdam-based design gallery The Frozen Fountain will show a selection of recently graduated designers from the Dutch art schools, offering a visibility to the design scene’s upcoming talents. Copenhagen-based multidisciplinary studio TABLEAU will create a room entitled “You can be anything” filled with functional items all in shades of pink to create Barbie’s dream space. BESPOKE This year the Bespoke section focuses on unusual and innovative materials – high-tech, bio-material, recycled material or special hand-made artisanal techniques – created by designers, including Carla Baz (Beirut), Maarten De Ceulaer (Brussels), Form Editions (Amsterdam), Christophe Gevers (Belgium), Lionel Jadot (Zaventem), Waiting For Ideas (Paris), SB26 & Samuel Accoceberry (Paris), ÆTHER/MASS (Schaarbeek).
Beirut-based studio Carla Baz will feature a collection seeking to stage an elegy to marble not merely as a medium, but even more so as a subject and an object where the point of departure and destination loop into each other. Form Editions (Amsterdam) founded by the design-duo Rive Roshnan will present their own work together with other designers from their collective dedicated to limited editions using only the most high level materials, processes, crafts people and manufacturers.
Christophe Gevers (Belgium) will re-release its mythical limited edition lamp CG01 with Axis71 at COLLECTIBLE in collaboration with Architect and Interior Designer Caroline Notte. Placed in 1968 in the restaurant “Le Cap d’Argent” in Brussels, the CG01 designed in a deep and frank red illuminated this brasserie and made this place an emblematic image of Belgian design. Using materials in unconventional ways to create objects that ever cease to surprise, Maarten De Ceulaer will show new pieces from his ongoing Mutation and Stained Glass series.
Leading Belgian interior designer, founder of Zaventem Ateliers, Lionel Jadot will return to COLLECTIBLE with new works. Creative studio Waiting for Ideas, founded by Jean-Baptiste Anotin, features pieces that trace the designer’s youth, shaped by his family history in the automotive industry. SB26 & Samuel Accoceberry is the studio founded in 2018 by global designer and artist Samuel Accoceberry and blacksmith Bruce Cecere. Together, they explore the limits of metal work to create distinctive furniture and lighting.
ÆTHER/MASS is the brainchild of product and interior designer Davy Grosemans. At COLLECTIBLE 2023, ÆTHER/MASS will present seven objects balancing on the border of utility, sculpture and experiment. Isabella Lobkowicz, Italian engineer, scientist and designer based in London, will debut her collection of chairs each having a personality that was inspired by her drawing in collaboration with Moleskine.
WHAT IS YOUR STORY?
Dedicated to emerging and mid-career independent designers and design studios, the Curated Section is a space for radical experimentation and discovery where participants are invited to explore pioneering ideas and processes in design. The Curated Section 2023 will be chaired and curated by Paris-based designer, artist and curator Leo Orta around the curatorial premise: ‘What is your story?’ in a scenography by Heim + Viladrich Office.
‘What is your story?’ will focus on the collaborations and networks that a new generation of artists, designers, and architects are building together to restore and empower a collective force of creativity from the grassroots, alongside local communities, artisans, and manufacturers. The proposal aims to encourage collaborative processes, honour craftsmanship and champion sustainable material choices by tracing the supply chain to expose the carbon footprint. ‘What is your story’ will present pieces by Louise Begue Teissier and Mathis Broussot (Paris), Zuzanna Spaltabaka (Warsaw), Christoph Wimmer-Ruelland (Vienna), Max Funkat (Berlin), Yuma Kano (Tokyo), Dilara Kan Hon (Istanbul), Studio Eidola (Zürich), Maria Tsilogianni (Athens), Sangmin Oh (Eindhoven), Gemma Barr (Eindhoven), WKND Lab (Seoul), Didi NG Wing Yin (Helsinki), Ori Orisun Merhav (Eindhoven), Atelier Duyi Han (Shanghai) and Coline Le Quenven (London), EDXXKAT (Moscow), Earthstone (Bruxelles), Lenny Stöpp (Rotterdam), Annelie Grimwade (Sweden), Henrik Ødegaard (Norway), Jibbe Van Schie (Netherlands), Basse Stittgen (Germany).
ARCHITECT <=> DESIGNER
With contemporary design merging more and more with art and craft, furniture conceived by architects is regaining its longstanding status. COLLECTIBLE offers a new platform solely dedicated to architects and interior designers who wish to showcase furniture they have recently developed, this year selected by Belgian interior designer Nicolas Schuybroek, including Edgar Jayet (Paris / Venise), Corpus Studio (Paris), AdriAn Blanc (Paris), Marion Bernard Architectes (Marseille), and Benni Allan presented by Béton Brut (London).
Founded in 2021 between Paris and Venice, Studio Edgar Jayet aims to increase the level of attention in the spaces that surround us, to give it more meaning, through interior architecture, scenography, design, publishing and research. Founded in 2017 by Konrad Steffensen and Ronan Le Grand, Corpus Studio creates spaces, objects, places, stories, atmospheres and environments, fusing architecture, decoration and design with a unique global vision. Paris-based architect AdriAn Blanc began his career in India, in contact with the local know-how. Back in France, he received recognition for his projects in urban furniture and micro-architectural installations as well as space layouts for hotels and restaurants.
Marseille-based architecture studio Marion Bernard Architectes will present a mirror and a chair at COLLECTIBLE 2023, conferring them a function of poetry. A London-based gallery presenting rare architect-led furniture and lighting from Europe and Japan, Béton Brut will showcase pieces by architect and designer Benni Allan from EBBA Architects.
NEW GARDE
The past years have been marked by a plethora of new galleries, design studios or collective dedicated to contemporary design emerging across the world, that forms the renewal of the collectible design scene. COLLECTIBLE 2023 seeks to acknowledge this by offering them an opportunity to establish themselves internationally. Galleries featured include GOOD SESSIONS (Marseille), SALT (Tel Aviv), fābula gallery (Moscow), Maison Commun (Brussels); collectives include NeeNee Collective (Amsterdam/Eindhoven), Laurids Gallée with Heim + Viladrich (Rotterdam / Montpellier), Diego Faivre, Pierre Castignola and Hugo Beheregaray (Eindhoven), Ia Kutateladze (Berlin/Tbilisi), and Arthur Vandergucht (Belgium).
Founded by Claudine Garcia in South of France in 2020, GOOD SESSIONS invites visitors to buy and discover selections made from a cutting-edge international selection of creatives. A brand new gallery in Tel Aviv, SALT is the first to open a space dedicated to functional art and collectible design in Israel. Founded by designers and artists Shai Yo Alfia and Tomer Netanel Levy, the gallery is mixing visuals, materials and techniques in order to develop unique taste, with strong affect of the colourful culture and history around them. Founded in 2019-2020 in Moscow, fābula gallery is a gallery working as a curatorial platform for contemporary art and collectible design. At COLLECTIBLE, Fābula will present Dutch designer Gert Wessels who creates work in which forms is created by chance. His typical forms are created in an ephemeral and reactive manner by cutting and sawing in polyurethane foam, after which he fixes the object in fibreglass and acrylic composite.
Brussels-based Maison Commun invites artists and designers to create pieces of jewellery based on everyday items, keepsakes, or recurring motifs in their production, with pieces by Kasper Bosmans, Martin Belou, Simona Denicolai, Arnaud Eubelen, Guillaume Bleret and Patrick Carpentier. Co-founders of the Surplus Collectible, Pierre Castignola and Diego Faivre will create a phone charging station for COLLECTIBLE, where visitors can charge their phones during the fair, to solve the well known issue for visitors at fairs to run out of battery. The furniture-charging station will be placed on carpets by and carpets made by Hugo Beheregaray.
NeeNee Collective was launched in 2016 by South-Korean graduates that went from Hongik University in South Korea to the Design Academy Eindhoven (Ahn, Hansol Kim, Kurina Sohn, Sho Ota, Shun Yoon and June Park), and gathered to promote a new generation of design, strongly showing narratives in their work and unusual experiment in shapes and material. Cofounded by designer Lauriane Heim and Johan Viladrich on an interest in contextual and societal subjects, Heim + Viladrich Office will showcase a series of special objects made with Rotterdam-based designer Laurids Gallée. Coming from Tbilisi, Georgia, Berlin-based Ia Kutateladze will showcase hand-crafted functional, sculptural objects with an interplay of elements like metal and wood.
Arthur Vandergucht from Belgium will show his FRANS permanent collection, characterised by pure and clear materials. FR04 is a sequence of repetitions, inversions and representative curves linked by the distinctive mass of the rivets.
DIALOGUE
While COLLECTIBLE is dedicated to contemporary creation, references and an echo to the history of design cannot be ignored. Placed in the context of dialogue between historical pieces from the turn of the century and contemporary design, this new section provides a new look at this affiliation. This new section is on invitation only and is curated by Jean-François Declerq, design curator, expert in 21st century Design for Bonhams Belgium, Tajan and R&C France, founder of Atelier Jespers. It will focus on the Grupp Pantagon with prototypes by Wolfgang Laubersheimer for Galerie Jean- François Declerq, pieces by Paolo Palluco and Rei KawaKubo for Galerie Alain Hens and ParadisoTerrestre for the new gallery founded in Knokke in February 2023, Galerie Z7.
SCENOGRAPHY
To mark its arrival at its new Tour & Taxis venue, COLLECTIBLE 2023 invites two scenographers to work in dialogue. PAF Atelier will produce a single-material scenography to create an essential decor that corresponds to the fair’s aspirations. Made from inflatable, a product that PAF Atelier has been intensively working on, these objects will be produced sustainably and will be reused afterwards, while drawing inspiration from the marine environment, objects of the wind, objects from the coastline, but also from the game universe or UFOs and extraterrestrial elements. Volfram Studio draws inspiration from the works of Jan Schoonhoven to reduce, align and organise all parameters into a coherent lay-out, creating a new floor plan and an innovative booth composition in the venue’s timber pavilions sheltered by a saw-tooth glass roof.
Established in 2018 by art and design professionals Clélie Debehault and Liv Vaisberg, COLLECTIBLE is the only fair in the world to solely focus on 21st-century design. Breaking away from the traditional fair format, COLLECTIBLE seeks to reinterpret the design fair model by offering visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in an open and integrated space where galleries, design studios, institutions and foundations come together. Located in central Brussels, COLLECTIBLE contributes to positioning Belgium as a place for innovation and a vibrant international design destination.
9th – 12th March 2023 Tour & Taxis Avenue du Port 1000 Brussels
www.collectible.design
See also: Taste Contemporary Presents Norwegian Ceramic Artists
