Conceptual Echoes: Bridging Decades of Belgian Art in Brussels

A sheet of instructions tacked to the wall. A plexiglass cube refracting light. A photograph of a man contemplating a void. These artefacts reflect a movement that sought to decouple art from its physical form. Echoes of Conceptualism, the latest exhibition at Kanal-Centre Pompidou in Brussels, explores this dematerialisation of the art object, pairing works by Belgium's conceptual pioneers with contemporary practitioners.

The exhibition poses a critical question: how do conceptual art’s provocations persist in a digital age? Curators Sofie Van Loo and Laurent Busine approach this inquiry through juxtaposition. Marcel Broodthaers’ 1964 Pense-Bête, a plaster-cast assemblage incorporating his poetry, is displayed alongside Joris Van de Moortel’s work, which interrogates the material remnants of performance. This dialogue extends beyond medium into ideology, questioning the critical potency of radical gestures from a bygone avant-garde.

Conceptual art emerged in Belgium during the cultural shifts of the 1960s, as documented by cultural historian Dirk Lauwaert. Artists like Broodthaers, Jacques Charlier, and Jef Cornelis embraced the ephemeral, the idea, and the document as alternatives to commodifiable painting and sculpture. This ethos is evident in Broodthaers’ Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (1968–1972), dissected in the exhibition through archival photographs and ephemera from Brussels' Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts.

Van Loo states, “Conceptual art’s use of institutional critique is as relevant today as it was in the 1960s,” highlighting parallels between Broodthaers’ satirical museums and contemporary artists challenging the art market’s structures. The exhibition includes recent works by Ana Torfs, whose 2018 piece The Parrot’s Tale overlays text and imagery to comment on colonial histories—a thematic extrapolation of Broodthaers’ critiques of European cultural imperialism.

The exhibition resists nostalgia, arguing for the elasticity of conceptualism’s principles. A video by Mathias Pfund captures the disassembly of an artwork—a nod to the anti-monumentality advocated by Charlier. Opposite, a series of index cards by Belgian-Congolese artist Sammy Baloji catalogues urban landscapes shaped by colonial architecture, extending conceptualism’s documentary tendencies into postcolonial critique. The range of media—photography, text, video, assemblage—reinforces that conceptual art’s refusal to be confined by materiality remains its most enduring legacy.

Focusing on locality grounds Echoes of Conceptualism within Brussels’ art historical context. Kanal-Centre Pompidou’s decision to situate this discussion here is no coincidence. The city hosted key conceptual art exhibitions in the 1960s, including the legendary Prospect 69 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts. The curators have woven this heritage into the exhibition’s fabric, sourcing loans from Belgian archives and private collections. The inclusion of ephemera—letters, performance scripts, and documentary photographs—offers a glimpse into the infrastructures that both sustained and critiqued art institutions of the period.

The exhibition catalogue, edited by historian Chantal Pattyn, further enriches this context. In one essay, Pattyn traces conceptual art’s Belgian iterations back to Paul Nougé, a Surrealist whose 1929 pamphlet Le Surréalisme en Plein Solei prefigures later conceptual preoccupations with language and performativity. Another essay by artist Thierry de Cordier contrasts the photographic documentation of 1970s interventions with today’s reliance on digital archives, probing what has been gained—and lost—in this shift.

While the exhibition is anchored in conceptualism’s Belgian history, it acknowledges the movement’s global trajectory. References to U.S.-based contemporaries like Sol LeWitt appear sparingly, suggesting these dialogues are about shared concerns rather than influence. The decision not to overly internationalise the exhibition leaves room for a deeper interrogation of its Belgian core.

As the show progresses, its juxtaposition of past and present suggests a broader thesis: conceptual art was never a finite movement. Rather, it was an ethos, adaptable to shifting contexts and technologies. This becomes evident in the closing room, where visitors encounter Broodthaers’ Décor: A Conquest by Marcel Broodthaers (1975), a mixed-media installation critiquing capitalism’s co-option of art. Positioned near Baloji’s Urban Now: City Life in Congo, the pairing implies that conceptual strategies retain their relevance when applied to urgent contemporary issues like postcolonialism and the climate crisis.

However, the exhibition invites scepticism. Does anchoring contemporary practices to historical conceptualism risk retrofitting them into an art historical narrative? Detaching art from the market was radical in the 1960s, but can such gestures avoid complicity in the highly commercialised art world of 2023? Van Loo acknowledges these tensions, remarking, “Conceptual art’s legacy is not untainted, but it remains a foundation for questioning.”

More than fifty years after Broodthaers chiselled his words into that plaster block, Echoes of Conceptualism proves that ideas endure. Whether interrogative or affirming, they continue to reverberate, adapting to the urgencies of their time. The exhibition does not resolve its provocations—it expands them, asking visitors to grapple with what conceptualism means in a world where even ideas are commodities. One leaves Kanal-Centre Pompidou not with answers, but with a blueprint for further questioning.