Exhibition preview·Brussels
In Brussels, 21 artists make the case that conceptual art was never dry
Levey Kwok's two-part exhibition Wet Conceptualism, on view in Brussels through December 19, pairs Belgian conceptual pioneers such as Marcel Broodthaers and Jef Geys with a younger generation to argue that ideas in art cannot be separated from the bodies, materials and politics that produce them.
A new group show in Brussels is pushing back against the textbook story of conceptual art. Wet Conceptualism, the first chapter of a two-part exhibition at Levey Kwok, gathers 21 artists who arrived at conceptual practice by very different routes, and argues that an idea in art was never as detachable from its physical support as the standard history suggests. The show runs through December 19, 2026, with a second chapter due in March 2027.
The exhibition takes its name from a term coined by American artist Warren Neidich in 2023. Where a dry conceptualism locates meaning in language, systems and instructions, exemplified by Sol LeWitt's written directions or Lucy Lippard's writing on dematerialisation, a wet version lets the physical, social and political conditions around a work seep into it. Meaning, in this account, lives not only in the instruction but in the hands, materials and circumstances that carry it out, a distinction the curators link to a present in which digital interfaces constantly mine attention, a process the late philosopher Bernard Stiegler warned could wear away at human judgement.
Brussels gives the argument a local anchor. Marcel Broodthaers, Walter Swennen, Jef Geys and Ria Verhaeghe stand for a long Belgian lineage of conceptual thinking, while Haseeb Ahmed, Oriol Vilanova and Laure Prouvost bring that lineage into the present. Around them sit international peers and forebears including Alighiero Boetti, Claire Fontaine, Liam Gillick and Neidich himself, in a cross-generational, cross-border conversation that treats the Belgian scene as a tradition in its own right rather than a footnote.
The works on view make the thesis concrete. Claire Fontaine revisits the controversy around Carl Andre's bricks, Jef Geys grades creativity with deadpan schoolroom marks, and Mauro Giaconi layers book pages, comics and drawings into dense collages of text and image. The gallery's wider programme extends the conversation, with solo presentations by Sean Crossley and TR Ericsson following the first chapter. The second chapter, opening in March 2027, will turn to perception, cognition, pharmacology and media, testing how far the wet idea can stretch.
