09 december 2025, Emily Van Driessen
Five exhibitions to see in Antwerp during Art Antwerp
Art Antwerp runs from Thursday 11 to Sunday 14 December 2025 and, as always, the fair brings with it a rich programme of exhibitions across the city. Below you'll find a selection of Antwerp galleries with exhibitions not to be missed during Art Antwerp, all of which are entering their final weeks this month.
Adrien Tirtiaux, Grand Chambord Interchange, FRED & FERRY
FRED & FERRY
To mark its fifth anniversary, artist Adrien Tirtiaux realised Grand Chambord Interchange, an impressive wooden staircase installation connecting two floors of the gallery. You literally walk through the space, moving from bottom to top and back again, as the architecture is reshaped through new and unexpected sightlines. The installation will remain in place for a year and forms the beating heart of the shifting exhibitions that will continue to gather around this architectural gesture.
Running alongside is a presentation by vana, an artist widely known yet somehow still elusive, best recognised as the quiet force behind Croxhapox in Ghent. Their restrained works consist of layered fragments of text, coffee stains, scraps of paper and subtle shades of grey, evoking the illusion of stacked books and cluttered desks. A beautiful counterpoint to the monumental circulation of Tirtiaux.
Everything is Wrong by vana is on view at Fred & Ferry until Saturday 20 December. Adrien Tirtiaux’s installation remains on view at the gallery until 10 July 2027.
Jan van den Abbeel, Apsara VII, 1968, + Guy Vandenbranden, Composition, 1975, Callewaert Vanlangendonck Gallery
This year marks Callewaert Vanlangendonck’s debut at Art Antwerp. After Art Rotterdam, Luxembourg Art Week and Art Brussels, the gallery now arrives on its home ground. At the fair they present a strong survey of post-war abstraction, with works on paper, canvas and in sculpture. Running in parallel at the gallery is From Order to Chaos, a group exhibition in which five Belgian abstract artists trace the movement from pure geometric construction towards lyrical freedom.
Within walking distance of the fair, a second exhibition opens at the headquarters of Delen Private Bank. Here, Callewaert Vanlangendonck, in collaboration with three other Antwerp galleries, including Plus-One Projects, presents a series of solo exhibitions throughout the offices of this impressive building. Callewaert Vanlangendonck shows, among others, works by the visionary artists Paul Van Hoeydonck and Guy Vandenbranden.
From Order to Chaos is on view at Callewaert Vanlangendonck until Sunday 1 February.
Bram Kinsbergen, At the end (2025) & For the next few hours we felt at home (2024, Plus-One Projects
Plus-One Projects
During Art Antwerp, Plus-One Projects presents a fair display that closely resonates with its group exhibition in the gallery, with works by Bram Kinsbergen forming a connecting thread between both locations.
At the gallery, After Painting After Painting (after painting) unfolds as a playful yet sincere continuation of the exhibition Painting After Painting at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent. The show functions as a contemporary Salon des Refusés. Plus-One invites artists who each, in their own way, open up the medium of painting.
Bram Kinsbergen paints worlds that feel both familiar and estranged. With sparse contours he suggests abandoned motels, dark forests or solitude beneath an empty sky. His work is shown not only at the fair and in the gallery, but also within the striking architectural setting of the headquarters of Delen Private Bank.
After Painting After Painting (after painting) is on view at Plus-One Projects until Saturday 20 December. The exhibition at Delen Bank can be visited during office hours from Thursday 11 to Sunday 14 December, Jan van Rijswijcklaan 184, 2020 Antwerp.
Rivers in the Sky, Eva Steynen Gallery
At Eva Steynen Gallery, Art Antwerp also sets up a clear dialogue between fair and city. Across both locations, a four-part presentation unfolds with distinct yet closely connected practices. The gallery exhibition takes its starting point from the book There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak and explores the invisible threads that connect people to one another, as well as to rivers, landscapes and natural forces that predate us.
At the fair, the same idea takes shape in Traces of Common Ground. Once again, connection lies at the heart of the presentation, but now through the act of looking itself: what does a surface reveal, and what remains just beneath the skin of the image? Ken’ichiro Taniguchi works with cracks and indentations in the street surface, small wounds through which the way our cities inscribe themselves into nature becomes visible.
There Are Rivers in the Sky is on view at Eva Steynen Gallery until Saturday 20 December.
Pavel Büchler – Experience Tommy Simoens Gallery
Tommy Simoens Gallery
At Tommy Simoens Gallery, Experience brings together a compact overview of works by Pavel Büchler from the period 1999 to 2025. Büchler focuses on moments in which, supposedly, nothing happens: the anticipation before a concert that never begins, the gentle rotation of a record before the music starts, the rumble of applause without a performance, the attempt to make time tangible through small gestures.
The work Experience itself originates in Büchler’s youth in 1970s Prague, where rock music circulated through endlessly copied cassette tapes. Jimi Hendrix, fully distorted by noise and wear, was the version he grew up with. When he later heard the ‘clean’ recording, it barely resonated with his memory. Decades on, Büchler presses a vinyl single on which only the surface noise of Hey Joe can be heard. The music disappears, but the shared listening experience remains as a trace.
Experience is on view at Tommy Simoens Gallery until Saturday 20 December.
