Veerle Wenes’ design gallery, Valerie Traan, does not strictly deal in design and is neither strictly a gallery. Instead, the definition-defying hybrid space is an intimate blurring of the domestic and commercial, a place where design, architecture and art are inseparably entwined, and little distinguishes the personal from the professional. And that’s exactly how Veerle likes it.

In fact, it is the only mode of living and working that makes sense to Veerle, who opened the Antwerp-based gallery in 2009, in a space comprised half by a 19th-century ecclesiastical building, once used by nuns, and the other by a former 1970s furniture showroom. Since then, she’s used her house and workplace as a platform for celebrating objects that communicate stories about their makers in a context that is domestic, intimate and beautiful in the way you would expect of someone who helped launch the careers of names like Muller van Severen.

Here, as part of our series exploring design, architecture and food in Antwerp and Ghent, we speak to Veerle about her life, work and space and get her tips for young collectors.

Veerle Wenes: “I don’t call what I do work; it’s my passion. There is no boundary between my work and life for me. When I go to an exhibition, for example, is that work or is that life? It’s hard to say. I live while I’m working, and I hope for everybody to be able to do the same. 

“When my husband and I were searching for a place nine years ago, I wanted a combination between a gallery and a living space, and definitely something more interesting and flexible than the white cube gallery format.

“I want to live among what I like, and the exhibitions that I do are presentations of precisely those things. I enjoy this arrangement because I am able to use the beauty of the things I exhibit as part of my life. When I invite people privately, they also come to the gallery. In the living space, I mix pieces from my own collection with pieces from exhibitions and pieces that I can sell. Like my gallery, part of the collection in my house is not set in stone and changes regularly.

“At the same time, during the opening hours of the gallery there is no private space because everybody is able to walk in. Because we are only open for twelve hours a week, it creates no complication for our private life.

“Art and design are not exactly interchangeable for me because, unlike art, design has a specific function. You cannot use a sculpture as a chair or a table. But, having said that, my gallery’s concept puts an emphasis on mixing art and design. I am a trained architect, so architecture is very important too, and I looked toward architecture in the development of my concept as a gallerist.

“People say that there is a continuity in my choices of objects. But I am not only guided by the way things look, neither can I verbalise my taste or explain my choices. I like to show stories, attributes of the everyday and art pieces inspired by the proasic; something as mundane as the washing hanging outside to dry, for example.

“It is not a single story that I am trying to tell. Every exhibition, like every artist, designer or architect, has his or her own story. For example, Muller van Severen and Rikkert Paauw, who both have a very sculptural approach and make useful design, are nevertheless two very different designers with very different stories.

“My main influence was my father, who was a small collector and brought us to see art from a young age, so we were educated like a small family of collectors. The painting by Raoul de Keyser hung by the large table was acquired by my father and is the most important piece of art in the house for me, because it is beautiful and has a lot of emotional resonance, as well as having an interesting history, dating back to the 1970s.

“My advice to aspiring collectors would be to follow their gut. Don’t think about the investment side of things and follow only your taste, which will make things much more interesting. You have to resonate with the stories behind the pieces, to be interested in the stories of the subjects that make the objects, because every good artist and designer is a story-teller in one way or another. It’s important that you have feel something towards the work and that you want to have it in your house or your collection. So don’t think about the money, but think about that match and the story. 

“I think of myself as more of a gallerist than a collector. I have a collection that I have built over the course of my life, but I am not what is considered a normal collector who is buying all day and all the time. I don’t want to possess everything. I want to be surrounded by nice things, but I don’t necessarily want to hold on to them forever. My philosophy is that we do not need more pieces, we need good pieces. And when we have good pieces, they have to be the right pieces.”