December 14, 2025The cofounders of the contemporary-design gallery Objects With Narratives — Belgian brothers Nik and Robbe Vandewyngaerde and Nik’s childhood friend Oskar Eryatmaz — believe in design with stories to tell. “As architects, [Nik and I] were trained to develop strong concepts, and we wanted to bring that idea into the world of design,” says Robbe, who was recently named to the Forbes Belgium 30 Under 30 list. (His partners have just barely aged out of consideration.) “Stories are memorable, just like the fairy tales we heard as children.”
When the trio joined forces, in 2022, Nik was at Herzog de Meuron, in Switzerland, Robbe was with Rem Koolhaas’s firm, OMA, in Rotterdam, and Oskar was working in insurance in Bruges. What started as a passion project quickly turned into a burgeoning business. Today, they oversee a gallery in an ornate Beaux Arts building on the Place du Grands Sablon, in Brussels, that formerly housed both a museum and the offices of the Pierre Bergé auction house. And this May, they opened a showroom in a Geneva apartment overlooking the Jet d’Eau, in association with an art-advisory firm and dealer Edward Mitterrand.
Their clients include fashion industry names like Dries Van Noten, Christian Louboutin and Valentino’s longtime partner, Giancarlo Giammetti. Their roster of some 40 designers, meanwhile, is distinctly international. It includes Ben Storms, from Belgium, whose work often incorporates inflated pillow-like shapes made of metal, marble or glass; fellow Belgian Lionel Jadot, whose idiosyncratic pieces give a second life to salvaged materials; and Tiberiu Cojocaru, from Romania, whose bold, expressive furniture is made of highly textured wood.
Objects With Narratives also represents South African blacksmith Conrad Hicks, known for forging metal into incredibly sinuous shapes, and the London-based Paul Cocksedge, whose recent “Critical Mass” exhibition at the Brussels space featured marble coffee tables resembling assemblages of marshmallows and a shelving unit made of corten-steel plates and beams.
Introspective caught up with Robbe and Oskar and learned how the design of a chair led to a change in career, an old oil tank was transformed into collectible furniture and a chance meeting led to the establishment of their Brussels gallery, plus what’s coming next.
Robbe, I believe the starting point for the gallery was a chair you created with Nik.
Robbe Vandewyngaerde: My brother and I had never done anything together. We were both in the same field in different countries, and we were like, “We’d like to work on a project together.” At the time, I was twenty-one, my brother was twenty-four. He said, “Let’s do something on a smaller scale. Let’s do some design objects.” And we created the One Curve chair out of steel. The idea was to have one curved plane and to intersect it three times. Each of the sheets of metal has the same dimensions. It became like a spatial drawing.
How did that lead to you setting up Objects With Narratives?
RV: We created a few other pieces and started working with three small galleries. We realized there were rules and norms within the gallery system, which were difficult for younger artists like ourselves. Some of the galleries would take large commissions, and there was not always complete transparency.
Oskar Eryatmaz: Objects With Narratives is all about transparency and collaboration. For us, we’re not just selling the products, we’re also the voice of the artist. That’s why we love pieces with meaning, with narratives. We put our artists in direct contact with clients. We give a lot of trust.
And now, you’re so busy with the gallery, you don’t really have time to create new works, although pieces from your earlier collections are available through Objects With Narratives. Speaking of the gallery’s name, how did you come up with it, and are there objects without narratives? Doesn’t everything have a story?
RV: I would say yes and no. There are stories that you’re going to remember, and there are others that don’t mean anything. When you have a strong concept and a strong narrative, a piece will stay with you forever. We also have some fantastic artists whose personality becomes the story.
Can you each talk about the narratives behind some of your designers’ pieces?
OE: Sofie Middernacht and Maarten Alexander are a duo with a background in photography. They were renovating their studio and dug up an old oil tank for heating. They thought the material was very interesting — the steel with all the earth, the rust, the oil dripping on the sides. And instead of discarding it, they chose to chop it up and make benches, tables, stools, chairs, desks and wall sculptures with it. They used a very slow, repetitive technique of layering resin on top of the steel.
RV: Katrien Doms was a promising architect, yet because of personal health issues, she left her job and moved to a small house next to a forest in Belgium. Due to her circumstances, she has to be alone. She decided to use the element of fire and wind to manipulate wooden beams, which she then assembles into wall sculptures. She doesn’t decide what the effect will be. It depends on the way they react to the heat, humidity and wind outside. It’s a very meditative, calm process.
There seems to be a lot of aesthetic diversity in what you show. Would you agree?
RV: Definitely. From the beginning, we’ve always said that we’ve never wanted to be known for a style. Every artist is different. We don’t want to be a gallery that says, “No, it doesn’t fit in our roster, because that’s not our identity.” Our identity is craft, our identity is stories. And if those stories are told with color or with louder forms, or they’re told with softer ideas, both can be OK.
OE: One thing most of our artists share is the fact that ninety-five percent of the pieces we have are made by themselves.
You started as a nomadic gallery. How did you come across the space in Brussels?
OE: This is a passion project of Nik, Robbe and me that got completely out of hand. At the beginning, we all did other jobs on the side. But over time, the passion project grew into a real business, and the next logical step was to find a location. We started looking for a space that was around three thousand square feet. Then, we met the managing director of MAD Brussels [the Center for Fashion and Design], Anaïs Carion, at a fair, and she said, “I love what you do. We need to get you to Brussels.” And she made it a personal project to find a space. That’s how we came upon this address. At first, we thought we’d just take what we call the ballroom. It has very high ceilings, gilded walls, the original wall paintings. But the owners of the building said, “If you want to take the whole of the building, we’ll come up with a plan.” So, we jumped and now have forty thousand square feet.
What has having this space changed?
OE: Mainly the possibility to show so much. We change shows every month and a half, every two months. And we do two or three shows at a time.
RV: All our artists want to show their new work, and we have the capacity to accommodate that. If someone has a new piece, we can say, “Bring it over! I’m sure we’ll find a good space for it.”
You have some well-known clients. What have they bought from you?
OE: With Mr. Giammetti, it was for the foundation he opened in Rome last May with Valentino. He’s really drawn to the work of Vladimir Slavov, and we have two permanent pieces at the foundation: a light sculpture and an outdoor sculpture.
RV: Dries Van Noten put Vladimir Slavov in his London store and Ben Storms in his New York boutique. It’s been a fantastic experience striking up a dialogue with these people, who mean something in the cultural industries, and understanding how they think.
You seem to have a very global perspective. How are you developing things internationally?
RV: Two years ago, I traveled to Korea. We already had one Korean artist, Hakmin Lee, who showed me around, and I met others. We decided to organize an exhibition of K-craft at Unhyeongung Palace, in Seoul. Then, nine months ago, I went to South Africa. It’s a country where there’s so much happening. We decided to do a South African show in Brussels, which will open in January. We want to create our own craft network in each part of the world. We can send artists to South Africa, for instance. We realize that a lot of artists get inspired by one another. We did a dinner two months ago with thirty or forty artists, and now some are talking about doing things together. For me, part of the role of a gallery is to cross-pollinate.
What other projects do you have in the pipeline?
OE: One of our dreams is to create a residency — a space for artists to come and work together. Over time, we’re also going to develop more experiences outside the gallery. We have an exhibition on December seventeen and eighteen in an old theater in Brussels called the Aegidium, which has been empty for a very, very long time. We’ll present a show of new pieces by Lionel Jadot, which will be a holistic experience. There will be music based on the sounds Lionel made producing those pieces, as well as light and olfactory installations.
