The Salon de RendezVous 2026:
Espace Aygo
Avenue Van Volxem 311, 1190 Forest
Preview: Wednesday 9 September, 7PM - late
Opening hours: Thursday 10 September - Sunday 13 September, 11AM - 11PM
“We build towers. We always have. Towards knowledge, power, wealth, toward something greater than ourselves. These structures that pierce the sky have always been humanity’s most honest confession: we are creatures of ambition, restless and reaching.
But towers fall. And in the falling, something true is revealed.
This exhibition is built from both – the standing and the fallen. Because the climb matters as much as the collapse.” - Espace Aygo
Espace Aygo is an art and design collective comprising Salomé Sperling, Jaime le Bleu, Line Murken and Sijmen Vellekoop, who found each other through their studies at Design Academy Eindhoven. For the past five years, their practice has unfolded from a run-down Belgian townhouse in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, where they lived, worked, created, gathered, partied, imagined and exhibited. Working with found and salvaged materials, they transform everyday objects and functional utilities into enchanting environments, furniture and scenographies.
For RendezVous, Espace Aygo has conceived a site-specific installation doubling as a meeting point and a set for the Salon Encounters programme. A constellation of towers, rising upward and falling downward, creates a landscape exploring the cycle of climbing, falling and getting back up again. Integrating contributions by Nicolas Zanoni, Billy DeLuca, Ori Merhav and Antoine Grenez, and made with the loving hands of many collaborators, this temporary world is Espace Aygo’s last tribute to Brussels before they bid the city farewell and climb their tower towards a new adventure abroad.
Commissioned by Brussels Art Week and co-produced by Jester, the installation will have a second chapter in Genk as a duo-exhibition, from October 10, 2026 to January 10, 2027.
At the heart of RendezVous – Brussels Art Week is the Salon de RendezVous, a central meeting place where visitors, participating venues, journalists and cultural professionals meet and gather throughout the event.
Each year, RendezVous commissions an artist or collective to shape the Salon as a site-specific scenographic installation. The commission offers artists the opportunity to develop an ambitious project on a large scale, whilst it creates a framework to accommodate various forms of encounter and artistic presentations in our Salon Encounters programme. In 2025, our inaugural Salon was conceived by British artist Zoe Williams, who developed The Tip Inn, a tavern playfully subverting notions of decadence, debauchery and service. In 2026, we are collaborating with the Dutch design and art collective Espace Aygo, who will conceive of a surreal world in their unique aesthetics, working predominantly with circular materials, as a last chapter to their period in Brussels.
Salon Encounters is our RendezVous’ discursive programme of talks, performances, conversations, screening sessions, music gigs and DJ-sets curated in close collaboration with our participating venues and partners. It’s our way of building bridges across the sector through transdisciplinary events.
The Salon is hosted in a different location every year, moving between Brussels’ diverse neighbourhoods. By activating a new site with each edition, RendezVous not only provides a fresh context for the artistic commission but also encourages visitors to discover different parts of the city, highlighting Brussels itself as an essential part of the experience.