23/04/2026 - 26/04/2026

Emergent is proud to announce its first participation in Art Brussels, marking an important step onto the international stage. At this year’s fair, Emergent presents works by Adam Leech and Griet Dobbels. This debut highlights the gallery’s commitment to fostering contemporary voices and contributing to a broader dialogue within the global art scene.

Griet Dobbels (Belgium) is a visual artist. Her artistic career started in 1996 after graduating from The Royal College of Art in London.
Key concepts in her work are: the dialectic between grandeur and nothingness, ephemerality and timelessness, nature and culture, beauty and horror, safety and danger, chaos and control, universality and individuality. In terms of form, this content translates into various media: drawings, video installations, sculptures and happenings. Both in terms of content and form, she seeks boundaries and strives for an objectifying position. With an open attitude, she enters into very diverse collaborations. She does not shy away from shaking up expectations and uses the codes that are specific to her individual art practice for experimentation. Dobbels has exhibited at home and abroad and realized a number of notable residencies, including the most recent in Jerusalem and Ramallah (2021-2023) and Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto (2017-’18). Her work can be seen in a museum context, in arts centers, in public spaces or on the basis of various private initiatives. 

Adam Leech (San Diego, USA) creates paintings and videos in which he often portrays contemporary Western society. In doing so, he does not adopt a critical, analytical or moralising stance. Hidden inhibitions or desires, the superficiality and humanity concealed beneath lifestyle codes, are evoked in an ambiguous, layered manner through the voice-over in his videos or via the pale, toxic or saturated colours of his paintings. In both the videos and the paintings, the play of light often plays a crucial role. Sometimes he does this literally, through the application of sequins in a painting. In recent paintings, he experiments with collage techniques and the use of a layer of epoxy to ‘seal’ the image.

Leech’s works often evoke mixed feelings. On the one hand, because they deliberately explore the grey area between art and kitsch. On the other hand, because he plays with different identities and their indeterminacy.

During the period 2020–2021, Adam Leech was artist-in-residence at S.M.A.K. He concluded his residency with the exhibition De gids. Leech’s oeuvre is characterised by a fascination with the human mind. In his work, he explores diverse forms of consciousness and the way in which they generate experiences, emotions and relationships. During his residency, he sought to understand these subjective processes in relation to the perception of art in the museum. To this end, he held discussions with all the teams and the board of S.M.A.K.. At the same time, he corresponded with academics and experts in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and the occult. In this way, he created a multifaceted field that gathers knowledge about the aesthetic experience, but also about its immeasurability. The guide consisted of a series of paintings and a video work. It was an exhibition that evoked wonder regarding human physiology, the psyche and perception.