Contour Series #3:
First Floor

Name: Contour Series #3: First Floor - Contemporary art between walls and moss
Start: 2026-06-05T18:00
End: 2026-08-30T18:00
Location: Vrijbroekpark

Contemporary art between walls and moss

Beeldende kunst

Contour Series

Expositie

Installatie

Set within the iconic hotel ruins in Vrijbroekpark, CONTOUR SERIES #3: FIRST FLOOR. CONTEMPORARY ART BETWEEN WALLS AND MOSS brings together works by contemporary artists in a setting where architecture, nature and history converge.

Conceived in the early 1970s as an ambitious eighteen-storey hotel and congress complex, the building was never completed. After only two floors were realised, construction was halted and the investors withdrew. What remained was a raw concrete skeleton, standing in the marshy landscape shaped centuries ago by the river Zenne. Over time, the structure was gradually reclaimed by its surroundings. Birch and willow took root in the sandy soil, a pond formed in a former extraction pit, and bats, beavers and countless other species made the site their habitat. Later, generations of street artists – among them Dzia, Manonina, Tuch and Gijs Vanhee – left their marks on the vast concrete surfaces, adding yet another layer to its evolving identity

Far from being a nostalgic relic, the Hotelruïne is a living platform in constant transformation. First Floor embraces this state of incompleteness, in which human intervention and ecological succession actively coexist. The participating artists present works that interact directly with the architecture and draw inspiration from the surrounding environment. Their practices are research-driven and process-based, sensitive to materials and aware of space. Through sculptures, installations and site-specific interventions, they question our environmental and spatial perceptions.

The open concrete spaces, once intended for hotel rooms and conference halls, house works that echo, infiltrate, or subtly disturb the architecture. First Floor privileges fragility over monumentality and process over permanence. Many of the works inhabit in-between states, while others trace the often invisible presence of animals and natural processes. Some interventions accentuate the tension between fragility and mass, introducing textiles, organic matter, or recycled materials into the rigid grid of columns and beams. In the Hotelruïne, interruption has become a terrain of coexistence and adaptation. With First Floor, the site opens once more as a framework for artistic dialogue. Here, art, nature and architecture meet in their unfinished state, inviting visitors to move slowly, look closely and reconsider what it means to build, to inhabit and to leave space for what might emerge.

First Floor. Contemporary art between walls and moss (06.06.2026 – 30.08.2026) is part of Contour Series, a series of visual and audiovisual exhibitions and projects produced and presented by kunstencentrum nona, this time in the context of BROEK.