The Fred & Ferry Gallery is celebrating its fifth anniversary. For years, the gallery has followed its own unique path, focusing on connection, experimentation and sustainable collaborations. The dazzling installation Grand Chambord Interchange by Adrien Tirtiaux visually embodies this approach.

Grand Chambord Interchange redraws the gallery space, both literally and figuratively. Tirtiaux’s staircase construction connects two floors, with one staircase taking us up and the other taking us back down again. They spiral around a cylindrical base, an impressive transparent wooden construction. The route taken throughout the gallery has been changed and the open views provide a new perspective on the spaces. Visitors taking the stairs pass one another, reflecting the gallery’s open outlook. Tirtiaux’s architectural intervention will remain in place for at least a year, with short-term and long-term exhibitions intersecting. Spaces will be redivided in different ways, including inter-floor metamorphoses. There will also be a mix of emerging and established artists and variety of media. The programme will evolve continuously, with Tirtiaux’s installation providing continuity.

Adrien Tirtiaux, Grand Chambord Interchange, 2025, FRED&FERRY

Grand Chambord Interchange can be interpreted as a manifesto that reflects what the Fred & Ferry Gallery stands for: a place where art grows and where networks and oeuvres reinforce one another. Frederik Vergaert’s strength as artistic director lies in connecting people. He stimulates both process and presentation, creating opportunities for encounters and exchanges. The gallery is not a commercial highway, but a crossroads of ideas. Grand Chambord Interchange symbolises a physical and mental connection between artists, projects and perspectives. The installation is modular and multifaceted, creating opportunities for interpretation and collaboration and forging new ways to carry forward the gallery’s vision.

The title Grand Chambord Interchange refers to the monumentality of the installation, the double-helix staircase of Château de Chambord and the notion of an interchange. The helix staircases at Chambord Castle in France are an architectural masterpiece, designed after Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings. Tirtiaux applies a similar principle, but with his own unique approach. Over the course of the year, the wall surrounding the staircases at Fred & Ferry will change. Initially, Tirtiaux wanted to give the work a green covering with openings in reference to his first important collaboration with Vergaert. Back when Vergaert ran the space Lokaal 01 in Antwerp, Tirtiaux created Office / Baraques there in 2013. In that former garage, sleepers covered an oil pit and Tirtiaux used them to build a staircase leading to the roof. The exterior of that installation was finished with a green wall. Office / Baraques was a playful reference to Office Baroque, an iconic work by Gordon Matta-Clark, who broke open a building to create new perspectives. Tirtiaux jokingly calls Grand Chambord Interchange ‘Office Renaissance’, a rebirth of his earlier work and a new phase for the Fred & Ferry Gallery.

The opening exhibition White Book of this celebratory year is curated by Vergaert and Bruno Devos, who have designed a white book and invited 56 artists to give it a personal interpretation. These artists are either connected to the gallery or have previously published with Devos and his publishing house Hopper & Fuchs. The white books are displayed on the ground floor of the gallery, while upstairs, the artists show work related to their contribution to the book. The presentation of the white books is through a DD.Trans publication. Its yellow spine provides added value, creating a warm glow. Tirtiaux found these books in Devos’s warehouse. They cannot be sold due to printing errors. After the exhibition, the white books will form a library. Devos will travel the world with them to book fairs, where they will also be exhibited. The faulty DD.Trans publications will later be repurposed by Tirtiaux as walls for his installation after the first exhibition. The wooden staircase structure forms a central element of the presentation, so visually powerful that during this first phase, Tirtiaux chose not to cover it with a wall. The gallery office will find a new place next to the staircase. The table consists of Tirtulles—modules Tirtiaux once made during a residency at FLAC that have since been used for various purposes, including as a bookshelf in the gallery space. Like the Tirtulles, Grand Chambord Interchange is changeable. The staircase functions as a sculpture, a circulation point and a meeting place. It is not an endpoint, but a beginning, a new stairway leading to what art and the functioning of a gallery can be and mean.

Adrien Tirtiaux - Grand Chambord Interchange - 2025