Archive

In Life Vest Snake, Ai Weiwei braids traditional Eastern iconography with urgent contemporary realities. Suspended from the ceiling, a sinuous serpent takes shape from 140 life vests once worn by refugees who, in 2016, crossed from Africa and the Middle East to the Greek island of Lesbos. The work coils through the space as if advancing toward the viewer—at once a protective skin and a stark memento of peril, hope, and survival.

Ai’s transformation of functional objects into sculpture brings the ethics of looking into the gallery: every vest has a story; every story is a life. The serpent, a potent symbol across cultures—rebirth, danger, knowledge—becomes a vessel for collective memory and a reminder that humanitarian crises are not abstractions but accumulations of individual journeys.

Within the Vanhaerents Art Collection’s Project Space, Life Vest Snake extends our commitment to presentations that reconnect objects to their social context. The installation also resonates with Ai’s broader practice, which has addressed dispossession, censorship, and freedom of expression through sculpture, film, photography, and architectural interventions. Here, sculpture functions as witness: a form that does not resolve the crisis it depicts, but insists that we remain present to it.

For its first decade, the Collection’s exhibitions drew on pop culture—naturally, given Pop Art’s deep imprint on our holdings. In 2018 we introduced a new format: the Viewing Depot. Inspired by the German Schaulager, it merges display and storage so works remain optimally accessible for study, conservation, and loans. With most pieces now on site in Brussels, rotations are agile and logistics transparent.

EXH#01 explored what this hybrid can do. Rather than a sealed, white-cube presentation, the depot reflects the real workings of a private collection: an instinctive, organic hang, crates in dialogue with artworks, and glimpses behind the scenes. On arrival, David Altmejd’s Colossi appear in a striking new context—inside and outside their cases—while tucked-away corners create intimacy for works like Christian Boltanski’s Réserve des Suisses morts (1989). The selection moves beyond earlier pop-centric shows, favoring depth within artists’ oeuvres and new juxtapositions.

A metal armature with pedestals and red velvet curtains stages Francesco Vezzoli’s La Nuova Dolce Vita in the cabinet space between the two main buildings. The top floor emphasizes multidisciplinarity, confronting pieces by Anne Imhof, Sam Falls, and Lucien Smith to probe where a work “exists” within an artist’s practice. The result is less a conventional exhibition than an exercise in looking—where architecture yields to art, logistics become legible, and context reshapes meaning.

Selected artists: Hamra Abbas, David Altmejd, Jean-Marie Appriou, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Christian Boltanski, James Casebere, Jeff Elrod, Sam Falls, Sylvie Fleury, Mark Handforth, Federico Herrero, David Hockney, James Hopkins, Marguerite Humeau, Matthew Day Jackson, Paul McCarthy, Allan McCollum, Mr., Matt Mullican, Bruce Nauman, Albert Oehlen, Ugo Rondinone, Sudarshan Shetty, Lucien Smith, Nick Van Woert, Francesco Vezzoli, Danh Vō, Franz West.

In Marilyn (2012), Philippe Parreno (b. 1964, Oran, Algeria) reimagines the final months of Marilyn Monroe’s life through a haunting blend of film, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Drawing inspiration from Monroe’s stay at New York’s Waldorf Astoria in 1955—where the actress sought refuge from fame and loneliness—Parreno reconstructs her hotel room and presence through technology.

A computer recreates her voice, a robot imitates her handwriting, and the camera becomes her gaze. The result is a ghostly portrait that blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, presence and absence, memory and imagination.

In the Project Space of the Vanhaerents Art Collection, the installation was introduced by Parreno’s subtle marquee above the entrance—a quiet reminder that what follows is both illusion and elegy.

The Feast of Trimalchio (2009) by the Russian collective AES+F is a monumental video installation composed entirely of digitally staged photographs. First presented at the 53rd Venice Biennale, the work reimagines Cena Trimalchionis from Petronius’ Satyricon—a satire of excess and vanity—through a contemporary lens of luxury, consumerism, and desire.

Set in an opulent, imaginary resort where guests and staff perform rituals of indulgence, the film unfolds as a visual symphony of pleasure, power, and inversion. Accompanied by a dramatic score, it culminates in a reversal of roles between master and servant, exposing the fragility of privilege and the cyclical nature of decadence.

Through its cinematic beauty and moral ambiguity, The Feast of Trimalchio reflects AES+F’s fascination with the myths, vices, and contradictions of globalized culture—a modern-day Olympus where spectacle reigns supreme.

Sympathy for the Devil was the second major exhibition at the Vanhaerents Art Collection in Brussels, co-curated by Walter Vanhaerents and Pierre-Olivier Rollin (Director of BPS22). Taking its title from the 1968 Rolling Stones anthem, inspired by Baudelaire and *Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, the show explored the moral and emotional turbulence of the human condition.

Unlike its predecessor Disorder in the House, which sought structure within chaos, this exhibition delved into the chaos itself—examining themes of temptation, fragility, and the duality of good and evil.

Highlights included James Lee Byars’ dazzling gold installation The Death of James Lee Byars (1994), alongside works by Bruce Nauman, Ugo Rondinone, and others meditating on life, death, and transcendence. Provocative juxtapositions—such as Farhad Moshiri’s Run Like Hell and Mario Merz’s Stuffed Caiman with Fibonacci—created a charged dialogue between beauty and danger, morality and desire.

Ultimately, Sympathy for the Devil invited visitors to question the boundaries between saint and sinner, challenging the very notions of virtue, seduction, and the human soul’s restless search for meaning.

Featured artists: James Lee Byars, Wim Delvoye, Urs Fischer, Barbara Kruger, Steve McQueen, Mario Merz, Yasumasa Morimura, Farhad Moshiri, Ugo Rondinone, Yinka Shonibare, Johan Tahon, and many others.

Disorder in the House was the inaugural exhibition of the Vanhaerents Art Collection in its new Brussels location. Curated by Walter Vanhaerents, the show brought together nearly seventy works spanning three decades of collecting, transforming chaos into a vibrant exploration of order, meaning, and contemporary culture.

Borrowing its title from Warren Zevon’s song, the exhibition staged a surreal film set where Takashi Murakami’s manga figures, Ugo Rondinone’s melancholic clowns, Paul McCarthy’s pirates, and Bruce Nauman’s animals coexisted in a dreamlike dialogue between Pop Art and its descendants.

Visitors were invited to interact physically and emotionally with the works—embracing Mariko Mori’s alien figures in Oneness (2003), confronting disorder as a path to reflection and renewal.

As the Collection’s debut, Disorder in the House not only introduced its breadth and complexity but also established a guiding principle for the decade to come: the dynamic interplay between high art and popular culture.

Featured artists: Doug Aitken, David Altmejd, Matthew Barney, Urs Fischer, Mark Handforth, Paul McCarthy, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Bruce Nauman, Ugo Rondinone, Mariko Mori, and many others.