Renato Nicolodi, Architectura Discordiae

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present Architectura Discordiae, the fourth solo exhibition by Belgian artist Renato Nicolodi at Kanaal. In this exhibition, Nicolodi invites visitors to slow down and experience space in a renewed way. Through sculpture, painting, and video, he explores the fragile balance between human ambition and impermanence, between what we build and what ultimately remains. Centred on his new installation Hybris, the exhibition offers an immersive encounter with architecture as both a physical and emotional landscape, inviting reflection on how we inhabit, shape, and imagine the spaces around us.

In Nicolodi’s work, architecture is never merely a structure. It becomes a container of memory, a mirror of human desire and a record of the inevitable decay that shadows our ambitions. His forms evoke corridors and stairways leading to closed thresholds, monumental façades concealing inner voids and spaces that shift between presence and absence. Each work is a meditation on time, silence and the deeper dimension of space.

At the centre of the exhibition stands Hybris, a new large-scale installation inspired by the myth of the Tower of Babel. Visitors first encounter an imposing wall of stacked concrete blocks. Only by moving around it does the structure reveal its full nature: a tower, unfinished and open at the back, inviting exploration. Inside, the space is intimate and austere. The sound of footsteps and the texture of concrete create a heightened awareness of scale and presence, where invitation and unease coexist. As Nicolodi explains, "Hybris is a reflection on our society. It is a monument to the human urge to build, to connect, and to create order, and at the same time to the fragility and impermanence that shadow these ambitions.” The tower becomes a social and philosophical metaphor, engaging with cycles of creation and destruction, power and vulnerability, and the illusions of universal order.

Beside Hybris, Nicolodi presents two large paintings, Icona Vacua and Icona Tenebris. These works approach architecture as an inner space, where the quiet, sacred quality of the icon resonates within an abstract, dark composition. They act as contemporary icons, not for worship but for contemplation. Their still presence invites viewers to pause and sense the depth of silence and light that architecture can hold.

The exhibition also features the video installation Regna Transitus – Shifting Realms II, a meditative work that visualises transition and the experience of change. In a continuous loop, the screen moves between black and white. Between these extremes unfolds an architectural corridor, slowly emerging from mist towards a gate that appears as a passage between worlds. As the movement reaches its climax, the image fades once more into black before returning to white. This rhythmic sequence of appearance and disappearance evokes a sense of being in between, of crossing from one state to another, where space itself seems to shift and breathe.

Architectura Discordiae reflects on what endures when structures erode, hierarchies dissolve or voices fall silent. In the quiet echo of concrete and the stillness of image, history, thought and the present moment meet. Nicolodi’s work does not rebuild the past. It examines the present with clarity and poetic precision.Renato Nicolodi, born in Brussels in 1980, studied at Sint-Lukas Brussels and was laureate of the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK), Ghent. His practice engages deeply with archetypal architecture, from utopian monuments to military bunkers, transforming these forms into spaces for reflection and shared memory.

Axel Vervoordt Gallery invites visitors to experience this immersive exhibition, where architecture becomes both a felt and spiritual space. It is a place to reflect on creation, belief and the quiet persistence of human aspiration.