Private Choices lifts the veil on a significant aspect of art: contemporary art collections and its initiators, the art lovers. The latter play an increasingly important role in the constantly growing art world and, in the era of disproportionate commercialisation and globalisation of the art market, these passionate people invest time and money in contemporary creation, often lavishly.
This project sheds light on 11 Brussels collections including works by Belgian and international artists, both confirmed and emerging, in an attempt at showcasing the specificity of each one. Through a selection process carried out hand in hand with the collectors, we discover a facet of their vision of art and life.
Carine Fol, art director at the CENTRALE and curator of the Private Choices show confides:
I experienced a fascinating journey as I went on the discovery of works, collections and the many fascinating personalities behind them. From kitchen to dining room, from bedroom to entrance hall, each room tells a story through dialogues between the works. Consciously or unconsciously, each collector gives sense to the work inside her/his universe. Whether these collections are methodical, intuitive, secretive or shared, they all tell a private story: the tale of the collector who found them, the acquisition, and the (mental and physical) proximity of works that feeds their lives. Constantly mutating and endlessly growing, their collection gives them energy, motivation to travel, to question their choices, sometimes beyond reason…
From the first to the last piece (personal tastes change whether one is 20, 40 or 60), all these works testify of the commitment towards an artist and her/his creation, confirming that collecting means staying alive all the while stirring certainties, unsettling and questioning the complexity of creation and its ties to the world. A collection reveals the collector insofar as collecting is a personal activity, a work onto oneself that allows the collector to look at the world differently in an aim of discerning its inconsistencies.
In addition to a 200 or so artworks, spectators will discover a selection of books, a piece of music and an interview of the collector who will introduce the universe of each artist.
The ambition of the CENTRALE for contemporary art is to give contemporary visual arts the widest possible audience. Located Place Sainte Catherine, this centre for contemporary art of Brussels City seeks to raise questions about today’s society. The idea is to be a space that is open to the world, Europe, the city and neighbourhood, and to respond to the specific characteristics of Brussels, with its diverse population and rich cultures.
Date: 09/11/2017 to 27/05/2018
Time: 10 h 30 – 18h
More info: Centrale for Contemporary Art
Head photo: by Anne Jouan / Instagram @nantiee
