Galerie Sept Expands to Knokke With a Light-Filled, Two-Level Space
A new outpost has joined Belgium’s coastal circuit: Galerie Sept, founded in Brussels in 2018 by Florian Araïb, has opened a second location in Knokke, the seaside town long associated with summer collecting and a distinctly international mix of visitors.
Araïb describes the move as both “organic and strategic,” pointing to a collector community that has steadily formed along the Belgian coast. In Knokke, he sees an audience that returns with regularity and spends time with art differently — less in the rush of a city calendar, more in a rhythm that allows for continuity. That tempo, he argues, supports the kind of long-term relationships the gallery aims to build with artists and collectors alike.
The choice of Knokke is also about geography. The town functions as a European crossroads, drawing collectors from Germany, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, often across generations. Araïb characterizes Knokke’s scale as “almost village-like,” a closeness that can intensify conversation, even as the town’s reputation places it within a broader international context.
The new space is larger than the Brussels gallery and is designed to broaden what Sept can stage. Architecturally, the interior is intentionally restrained, meant to support a range of practices rather than compete with them. A five-meter-high ceiling shifts the gallery’s relationship to scale, opening the door to more monumental works and more spatially ambitious installations.
Natural light is central to the presentation. Araïb notes that many of Sept’s artists work with surface, texture, and subtle chromatic shifts — qualities that change as daylight moves, making perception part of the experience rather than a fixed viewing condition.
The Knokke location unfolds across two levels. The ground floor is set to open in May, with a lower level dedicated to more focused presentations that lean conceptual. A second phase of the space is planned for later this year, allowing the gallery’s footprint — and its programming possibilities — to expand progressively.
Alongside the architectural rollout, Sept is beginning a collaboration with Sculpt Studio, an experimental botanical design studio based in Amsterdam and Brussels. The studio’s practice investigates the relationship between nature and human construction through large-scale installations that sit between organic growth and spatial intervention. Within Sept’s exhibitions, these elements are intended to function as a “living extension” of the curatorial framework, introducing temporality and transformation into the viewing experience rather than serving as decoration.
Programmatically, Araïb says the Knokke space will continue Sept’s core preoccupations: a sustained dialogue between abstraction and figuration, and between material and gesture. The difference, he suggests, will be one of intensity and immersion — exhibitions that are more spatially constructed and more precise in how works speak to one another.
Early presentations underscore that direction. The Knokke program includes “Juliette Clovis: Living Surface,” a solo exhibition centered on ceramic works composed of hundreds of porcelain elements, and “Sebastiaan Knot: Projection Reflection.” Together, they signal a gallery using its new scale — and its coastal light — to sharpen the terms of its curatorial language.
For Sept, the expansion is less a departure than a recalibration: a second address built around time, return, and the slow accumulation of attention — conditions that, in today’s market, can be as valuable as square footage.
