Brussels gallery “Spazio Nobile” during 8 years of its existence (opened on Rue Franz Merjay 142) on the European art market has become a model of fine taste and discovery of new names in contemporary applied art, design and photography. The gallery’s stand at PAD in Paris, the Collectible in Brussels, Salon Art&Design in New York is characterised by a unified style and harmony of creativity of all represented artists and designers. In 2016, the gallery was inaugurated by a married couple who, until then, had a significant career in the art world.

Lise Coirier, art historian, head of the Pro Materia art agency for over 20 years, publisher of TL Magazine (True Living of Art & Design) since 20008, author of books on art and design (like “Le Guide des Métiers d’art à Bruxelles”).

Gian Giuseppe Simeone is an art historian and archaeologist, specialist in the conservation of cultural heritage and consultant to the European Union in its evaluation.

“Spazio Nobile”, confirming its name, masterfully ennobles any space with respect for the “genius loci”, experimenting with pop-up exhibitions. In 2024, Lise and Gian, who live in a luxurious 1900 mansion in Tervuren, across the street from the Museum of Africa, decided to turn their own home into an exhibition space. They named the project “Spazio Nobile at Home” and the group exhibition “Inside the Dragon Eye”. The hospitable hosts warmly welcomed us on a sunny Sunday afternoon on 26 May. Some of the art objects were displayed in the Garden, which was reconstructed 5 years ago by landscape architect Aldrik Heirman. The villa was built at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries in the colonial style, but with touches of the fashionable Art Nouveau (stained glass windows in the living room and atrium typical of the style). Such homes tend to have a lot of antiques.  But not at Lise and Gian.  “Noble Space” is lit up with the bright colours of modern art and design. There is a special atmosphere in the house, where there are so many books (including written by the owners) and art catalogues.

When you enter the living room, a textile sculpture by the young American artist Jacqueline Surdell (Chicago) catches your eye. I was familiar with her three-dimensional works and had an occasion to learn more about her. The granddaughter of a Polish steel mill worker and a Dutch landscape painter, who grew up in the Midwest, she was professionally involved in sports from childhood.  That fostered in her a discipline and interest in repetitive, painstaking, craft practices. Creating wall sculptures requires whole-body action: the body becomes the weaving shuttle and the hand becomes the brushstroke. Although its material is fibre, the approach is painterly.  As the history of painting materialises as content in her works, the simultaneously swollen curls and textures of bound rope refute the illusions of the classical pictorial plane. The works actively transcend the boundary between painting and sculpture.

“Spazio Nobile” will present “Luni Solar” at Design Miami Basel in June 2024, a duo of two female artists whose countries are polar opposites geographically, climatically and culturally. I really enjoyed the work of both:

Taiwanese artist Pao Hui Kao creates some incredibly delicate and graceful objects out of paper, which we call “tracing paper”, using rice glue and lacquer paint.   This process allows the young woman to create a narrative in which the natural and the artificial come together to form landscapes that allow the mind to explore philosophical dilemmas that distress the human condition. Visually fragile, Pao’s work nevertheless possesses durability. Metaphorically, perhaps, like our World that will find the resources to withstand the challenges of the modern age. The Confucian philosophy in each object soothes the gaze of the viewer torn by internal and external conflicts.

The landscapes on ceramics of the artist Ann Beate Tempelhaug, who was born in the north of Norway and is widely recognised in her homeland, have Scandinavian names like “Northern Lights”, “Mirage” and “Mostly the North”. They remind you the Norwegian fjords and are associated with ancient runic inscriptions on stones, younger and older “Eddas”, skaldic poetry.  Ceramics, but in its Scandinavian autochthonous version

All this knowledge and experience you get in a social and relaxed conversation with the hosts of the gallery “Spazio Nobile” – renowned professionals in the art world of Belgium and Europe – Lise Coirier and Gian Giuseppe Simeone – in their beautiful House on the edge of the Sonian Forest.