New team of curators Currents #7 announced

Z33 Hasselt and Marres Maastricht are welcoming Louis-Philippe Van Eeckhoutte and Melanie Deboutte as curators of Currents #7. Currents is an annual group exhibition featuring work by artists who have recently graduated from academies in Flanders, Brussels, North Rhine-Westphalia, and the southern Netherlands.  

Louis-Philippe Van Eeckhoutte and Melanie Deboutte were selected by a professional jury out of 27 ()inter)national candidates. For Currents #7 they will go in search of authentic stories and artistic practices that blur our national borders. "We are particularly focused on new developments and the way in which young artists react to a world in which communication has become easier and more fleeting, but we are also interested in the way they situate themselves in an art-historical tradition. We are very grateful that Z33 and Marres have entrusted us with the responsibility of introducing these artists to a broader audience during Currents #7, starting in early 2020".

Duo of curators

Melanie Deboutte (1988, BE) is and independent researcher, curator and author based in Ghent. As assistant curator, she collaborated on the group exhibition De Zee (2014) in Ostend. She then collaborated on the exhibition PASS (2015) and Charivari (2018). In 2017, she co-ordinated the solo exhibition by Dirk Braeckman in the Belgian pavilion in Venice. In January 2019, she opened the research-based exhibition about the archive and the collection of Jan Hoet at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle. She has also worked on the solo presentations of young Belgian artists, written essays for exhibition catalogues, and reviews for De Witte Raaf and H ART.

Louis-Philippe Van Eeckhoutte (1985, BE) is an independent curator based in Brussels. In early 2010, he was living in New York, where he worked for Greenspon Gallery, David Zwirner Gallery and the Swiss Institute. From 2010 until 2018, he was gallery director at Office Baroque in Brussels and a member of the committees of Brussels Gallery Weekend and DowntownBrussels.Art. In 2018, he was artistic director of the Brussels Gallery Weekend and curator of the first edition of Generation Brussels. In 2019, he is the artistic consultant for the Rediscovery section of Art Brussels. He is likewise the founder and editor of the online interview series Drawing Room Play.

Currents #7

Currents is an annual group exhibition featuring work by recent graduates from art academies in Flanders, Brussels, North Rhine-Westphalia, and the southern Netherlands. The exhibition is embedded in a broader coaching trajectory that focuses on training, networking and professionalization. In Currents, Marres and Z33 cooperate as an Euregional platform for early-career artists and curators, in order to contribute to an international infrastructure for talent development.

The exhibition will open in early 2020 in the new Z33 building.