It is with great sadness and deep gratitude for all the people we have worked with, that we announce that Office Baroque is closing its doors. We wish to thank our tightly knit community of artists, staff, fans, visitors, clients, curators, critics, galleries, photographers, designers, installers, fair organizers and institutions. With an idiosyncratic, experimental approach, Office Baroque occupied an art world niche in Antwerp and Brussels, away from the buzz of large art capitals. It became a home for some of the most inspiring and diverse voices of our time to exhibit and find their ways into leading institutions, collections, publications and fairs across the globe. We had set no expiry date and saying goodbye to an organization that, against all odds, has programmed over 100 exhibitions and participated in leading fairs for more than 17 years, is bittersweet.
Office Baroque was started in Antwerp in 2007 by curators Marie Denkens and Wim Peeters. In 2004 they had launched Extra City, an experimental Center for Contemporary Art in the same city. In its early stages, Office Baroque offered a small, adventurous platform for American and European artists. The gallery had a distinct typography and was named after a work by American artist Gordon Matta-Clark, realised in Antwerp in the 1970’s. A modernist apartment on Harmoniestraat featured an intimate platform for exhibitions by artists as diverse as Owen Land, Matthew Brannon, Leslie Hewitt, Tony Conrad, Joe Bradley, Jef Geys and Keren Cytter among others. These early projects combined film, art, curating, theory and screenings, attracting small crowds of dedicated fans.
Twelve months later, the gallery had raised just enough money to move into a storefront space in the Antwerp diamond district. In a sweatshop turned gallery, many more artists joined the program, others became close allies. International galleries moved into the neighborhood and we had something people call a scene emerge from the shadows of the 2008 depression. Frieze London and Liste Basel were the first international art fairs that gave us major exposure and support.
In November 2013, Office Baroque opened its first Brussels based gallery with an exhibition by Michel Auder in a listed Art Nouveau building on Bloemenhofplein. A former retail store was repurposed by Boeckx Macken architects. The gallery soon expanded with a second location on Ravensteinstraat across from Bozar. Independent Art Fair settled down in Brussels in 2016. Magazines spoke of the new Berlin. The gallery became a regular at FIAC in Paris, Frieze Art Fair in London, Independent Art Fair in New York, Frieze Art Fair in New York, Miart in Milan and many more. Our dedicated staff was, to say the least, all in, all of the time.
In the background of 2016, an ice age seemed to spread through the art world as the market became increasingly polarised between emerging and blue chip art. A lot of the people who were active in the spaces in between, were hit by the so-called mid level squeeze. The outlines of the current ecosystem were traced long before, but things seemed to take an irreversible turn around that time. A lack of support and regulation on all levels in the art world, ended up and continues today, to put emerging and mid-career artists and galleries, ever more at risk. Long term (shared) goals seem to have disappeared from the radar. Being signed up by a mega gallery may have become the new holy grail of careers, for artists, gallery staff and even for gallery owners. At the very heart of the system, severe misuse of power continues to accompany admission into almost every segment of the art world, both for galleries and artists. A fix-all solution for many galleries remains to expand, in the hopes of interconnecting gallery growth, with spikes in represented artists careers, often until the very point of losing.
Most of the time we felt like gauchistes in an episode of moneyball capitalism, a combination that usually doesn't end well. For each project Office Baroque attempted to find the right curatorial voice, in a variety of cases to realise it was not the best commercial voice. Yet it had developed a distinct magic formula that somehow worked and led to a series of thought provoking exhibitions and presentations with Terence Koh, Leigh Ledare, Margaret Salmon, Alexandre da Cunha, Keith Farquhar and David Diao among many more.
During the Pandemic, Office Baroque started experimenting with online exhibitions in an attempt to find new connections with global audiences. Three back of the envelope experiments led to important breakthrough exhibitions: La Boîte-en-Valise (2021) took place in a reconstruction of Marcel Duchamp's portable museum, Chambres d’Amis (2022) was curated inside Swedish retailer Ikea’s final in print catalog featuring 39 aritsts and What Men Live By(2024), an exhibition about love featured illustrations by 27 artists accompanying Leo Tolstoy’s 1885 short story of the same name.
In the Fall of 2022 the gallery moved into a former gym on Everdijstraat in the center of Antwerp. The space had a punk crash pad vibe and was the stage for ten more exhibitions including individual projects by Pieter Slagboom, B. Wurtz and Robin Graubard. The last in situ exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Lauren Satlowski ran from November 2023 through January 2024. What Men Live By is the last project by Office Baroque and runs through September 15, 2024 at which time gallery operations will come to an end.
In the future we will more than ever remain committed, to deepen our engagement with art, artists and with everybody we will meet along the way. Beyond the current form of Office Baroque, we will be developing projects that use a different compass to produce, curate, publish, exhibit, nurture and discuss ideas, views and works in ways we weren’t able to imagine before. Stay tuned.
For now, it has been an honour to work with all of you!
