Tim Van Laere Gallery

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen

Antwerp, Jos Smolderenstraat 50

2017 – 2019

Nieuw Zuid

Last year the Tim Van Laere Gallery opened in the ‘Nieuw Zuid’ district. The building stands out in the area, among all high-rise buildings. Tim Van Laere established his gallery in 1997 and thought it was time to move. The space in the Verlatstraat had become too small.

Van Laere Gallery

Since its foundation, the gallery has acquired a solid reputation in the art world. The artists represented come from different countries and deal with different media (sculpture, painting, video, installation, photography). The general public knows Tim Van Laere primarily as the discoverer of the popular Antwerp artist Rinus Van de Velde. Van de Velde and other artists often make larger works and installations. Van Laere also wants to bring international names to his new gallery. He could not work with them in the past due to a lack of space.

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen

Tim Van Laere wanted a building tailor-made for the artists and chose OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen for this. Van Laere says about this:

I started working with them because they know the needs of a gallery and artists very well. We have talked a lot and that dialogue resulted in this design. Both architects are big fans of the Austrian artist Franz West, whom I represent in Belgium. We have also found each other in that love.

Sequence of spaces

The architects OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen explain that the design is conceived as a series of rooms: a storage space, offices, a white cube, a chapel and a patio follow one another. In this way art can be experienced in different ways. The rooms are built as simple concrete boxes, insulated on the inside and illuminated by skylights. When the gates are open, you can see the artwork from the street.

A work of art that you also see when the gallery is closed is the sculpture on the roof. It represents a warrior and is by Jonathan Meese. He calls himself the ‘first soldier of art’ and he has already incorporated other artists from the gallery as ‘soldiers of art’. Tim Van Laere’s brother, Admiral Freebee, performed during the opening of the gallery. The group stood on the roof and the statue looked like an extra band member.