Art Brussels

10/04/2026 – 04/10/26

The Boghossian Foundation presents Diary of Happiness, Jean-Michel Othoniel’s first major exhibition in Brussels, bringing together more than one hundred works inspired by thirty years of travel across the world.

Reflecting the Boghossian Foundation’s mission to foster dialogue between cultures, the artist invites visitors on a journey that retraces the travels that have shaped his vision of the world. A form of geography of thought, each work is associated with a particular country. Armenia, Belgium, Italy, the United States, France, India, Japan and Turkey emerge as so many remarkable destinations, forged through encounters and exchanges.

Alongside the monumental sculptures and installations unfolding in the garden and throughout the spaces of the Villa Empain, a hundred watercolours, works on paper rarely shown, form the guiding thread of an intimate and joyful exhibition. Like a travel notebook, they are revealed from room to room, as the diary of years spent abroad, bearing witness to journeys driven by affection and wonder.

The house inhabited by Jean-Michel Othoniel’s works becomes a place of memory and inward travel, shaped by transformation and reverie, a point of departure and of return.

With Paloma Bosquê and Roberto Freitas

20/05/2026 – 18/07/2026

Ore emerges from a praxis of exchange. Originated with an invitation from Van Den Weghe stone atelier, to Paloma Bosquê, whose research into geological time and material memory anchors this collaboration. Bosquê brought in Roberto Freitas, a Brazilian artist based in Brussels, to develop work combining their complementary practices. Through these encounters, matter becomes a site of dialogue. The works turn toward the Earth as living presence, attentive to its deep time, its pressures, and its vibrations. The exhibition approaches Earth’s matter as an archive where duration is compressed, fractured, and remains active, aiming to make visible its gaps, its metamorphoses, and long-term processes.

With Daniel Buren

30/05/2026 – 10/01/2027

In 1986, Jan Hoet – the then director of the Museum for Contemporary Art in Ghent, now S.M.A.K. – organised the extra muros exhibition ‘Chambres d’Amis’. This exhibition presented contemporary art in private residences at various locations in Ghent.

Daniel Buren was one of the 51 international artists who created a work in situ, integrated in the daily living space of the residents who were willing to open up their house for the artist and subsequently to the public. Buren’s work, Le Décor et son Double, was conceived as a work in two parts. In accordance with the concept of ‘Chambres d’Amis’, Daniel Buren realised his in situ work in the guest room of the private residence of Annick and Anton Herbert. He applied his ‘outil visuel’ on the walls of the guest room.

The artist, however, refused to entirely abandon the space of the museum – as Hoet intended it – and placed a complete and fully identical reconstruction of the guest room within the walls of the public Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent, which was still part of the Museum of Fine Arts at that time. At the end of the exhibition, the Herberts retained the intervention in their guest room and the work currently forms part of the collection of Herbert Foundation. The public part of Le Décor et son Double was reconstructed in 2011 and included in the collection of S.M.A.K.
 
Within the framework of the exhibition Chambres d’Amis turns 40 at S.M.A.K., both parts of Le Décor et son Double are once again being presented. The public part can be visited at S.M.A.K. in Ghent. The private part can be visited at Herbert Foundation, only as part of the weekly guided tour organised on Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

With Caroline Achaintre, Anna Zemánková, Régis Jocteur Monrozier, Simone Morgenthaler

Curated by Joël Riff

23/04/26 – 04/08/26

The Fondation d’entreprise Hermès will present the exhibition “Extrazimmer” by Caroline Achaintre in its exhibition space La Verrière. For this occasion, the artist will present several artworks including a large scale tapestry. The selection of works will be augmented and accompanied by works by Czech artist Anna Zemánková and sculptor Régis Jocteur Monrozier, as well as a text by Alsatian writer Simone Morgenthaler.