The Société is an exhibition platform located in the former ‘Société Bruxelloise d’Electricité’, a factory constructed in the 30s of the past century. The Société is a new space for contemporary art in Brussels Maritime, initiated by the artists Manuel Abendroth and Els Vermang, both directors of LAb[au].

As an artist, curator and art advisor we are curious about process based and technology driven art. In our curatorships we reflect how this situates in an art historical continuum and how this translates to truly contemporary aesthetics, through universal themes such as ‘Landscape painting’, the ‘Monochrome’….

Our artworks share characteristics with conceptual art, system art and concrete art – though actualised with contemporary materials, techniques and formats. Our broad artistic experience and technical knowledge motivated us to start a branch as curator and art advisor.

The Société aims to create a dialogue between traditional and non-traditional art, relocating electronic arts on the map of the ‘-ism’-loving art world. As much electronic arts’ pseudo’s; computer -, new media -,… and software arts, as the recent arrival of the ‘post’ prefix to digital and internet arts, address the necessity to underline artistic rather than technological themes and to refocus what it’s really about: aesthetics.