This new series, Design bites, unveil the backstage of contemporary creation. Tackling various topics from personal designer processes to the position of Collectible design on the global design market; these bites offer different views to suit all tastes. Today we talk with Johan Valcke, founder of the Valcke Art Gallery. 

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COLLECTIBLE: How did you get into collectible design? Why did you start your gallery?

Johan Valcke: I started my gallery when I retired as director of Design Flanders, a career that lasted for 42 years promoting makers and designers in Flanders. However, I noticed that ceramicists, silversmiths, glassblowers, in short artists/designers working in their own personal, contemporary and artistic way, with traditional materials and techniques, and trained in their craft, are little or not accepted in the design and art scene in Belgium/Flanders. Therefore I conceived my gallery as a more intimate, smaller platform for the promotion of those underestimated art expressions. I also focus on Belgian makers/designers what does not prevent me to invite artists from abroad.

“ I conceived my gallery as a more intimate, smaller platform for the promotion of those under estimated art expressions.”

C: Can you talk about the designers you present for COLLECTIBLE SALON, what makes their practice/pieces unique

JV: Every designer in the presentation has his or her own personal, highly creative expression and pushes the boundaries of their craft with tacit knowledge and technical skills.

C: What are the key questions you ask yourself before starting to conceptualise an exhibition?

JV: The key question is what discipline I will show, the kind of work and of course the makers I invite. I have to be impressed by their work, see innovative or very personal approaches. They also have to have, if they are more or less “established” makers” an international wallet of exhibitions in galleries, museums, competitions and collections. If they are younger it should be the personal approach and the new ideas they express that makes me invite them.

C: What is the relation you hold with the designers you work with.

JV: I have a very warm and friendly relationship with the makers I work with.

About Valcke Art Gallery

Valcke Art Gallery was founded in April 2018 in Ghent and presents three-dimensional tangible art in new and traditional materials. Technique and imagination, humour and fantasy, deep emotion, top craftsmanship, and tacit knowledge come together to generate eye-opening objects. These special pieces carry the ideas and vision of the maker, the artist.