Trajector Art Fair is an initiative by Hotel Bloom! and Centrifugal Projects that will take place from 23 April until 25 April 2010, coinciding with Art Brussels. Trajector Art Fair is an initiative that follows on from Projector Art Fair, presented by MAMA, that took place, to great critical and public approval in Rotterdam in 2008.Centrifugal's Ken Pratt, one of the key developers of the original concept, has worked with Hotel Bloom! to realise a new manifestation.
In Brussels -as in Rotterdam- the focus is not on the commercial gallery sector, but on the project spaces, artists' initiatives and independent curatorial projects that provide important platforms and experimentation grounds for emerging contemporary artists in the international arena. In part a celebration and playful game with the role of non-profit organisations, project spaces and independent curators within the art commerce systems, Trajector takes the original concept and re-realises it as a hotel art fair in Brussels' most recent boutique hotel. Tongue-in-cheek, critique or hardcore commercial? That's largely up to the participants to determine.
Trajector Art Fair will transform Hotel Bloom! into a vibrant ‘boutique hotel art fair' with eighteen rooms and a wide range of conference rooms and public spaces providing a platform for a range of international art spaces and curators to present some of the best emerging contemporary art to a Brussels audience.
The range of international exhibitors - coming from Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland, France, Finland and the UK, amongst other locations - range from the very young to those already established on the international art circuit. Each will present a curatorial project within a hotel room, at once referencing the tradition of the ‘hotel art fair' (for example, the Gramercy International Art Fair in New York which grew into The Armory Show).
In addition to these core presentations, Trajector Art Fair will deliver other thematic programmes. The first and most substantial of these is ‘Taut - That Certain Tension Between Fashion & Art'. Consisting of an exhibition element and events such as panel discussions, lectures and presentations, Taut engages directly with some of the key issues of creativity at the intersections of art and fashion. Taut will be curated and programmed by Laurent Dombrowicz and Ken Pratt. Their respective roles as Fashion Director and Art Editor - and later as Joint Editors in Chief - of the lauded niche magazine Wound perhaps explains why they are so suited to this task. From their respective fashion creative and art curatorial backgrounds, whilst at the creative helm of Wound, they created a thinking magazine in which the respective disciplines of fashion, art, architecture and design always developed a thematic discourse; each discipline operating with autonomy and credible in its own field, and yet always in dialogue with the other respective disciplines. In many ways, Wound remains one of the few ‘glossy' magazines that managed to offer its positions on fashion, art, architecture and design on equal footing.
In programming the events and exhibition manifestations for Taut, they will once again launch into navigating a parcours through the intersections between fashion and art, though this time in physical space and real time rather than between the covers of a magazine.
As was always the case in Wound, Taut will address serious questions of the roles and positions of fashion and art in contemporary culture to a broad, thinking audience. Intelligent without being humourless, thoughtful without being insular, Taut is sure to be a treat for anyone interested in fashion and art. If their published efforts have already shown that they entirely refute all notions that fashion is only for the superficial and art only for a pretentious elite, then Taut promises to be a continuation of the paths they have already developed together so well.
Art and fashion are like a pair of problematic lovers: not sure that they are good for each other; uncertain that they even understand each other and yet inextricably linked and attracted to each other...
And where better than in Belgium to consider this dichotomy? Belgium, whose medieval city-states founded their wealth and importance on expertise in textiles; whose old master paintings still form the basis for what we understand as ‘costume history' in northern Europe. Belgium, whose disproportionate influence on international fashion thinking in much morerecent decades is, perhaps, only matched by the disproportionate influence its artists and patrons wield in international terms.
From 23 to 25 April 2010 at Hotel BLOOM, rue Royale 250, 1210 Brussels. Open Friday 23 April, 18h to 22h, Saturday 24 April 11h to 21h and Sunday 25 April 11h to 18h.
www.trajectorartfair.org