A gallery is mostly a lease. It sets the size of the work, the length of the run, the number of shows a year and, quietly, which artists can be afforded. Elevator does not carry that cost, so none of those things are fixed. We borrow rooms that are between uses — a beach villa waiting on a sale, a port shed that only works after dark, a pharmacy whose fittings were never stripped out — and give them back when the show comes down.
Because no single room has to serve every exhibition, several can run at once. Three are open today, in three different places, and they do not resemble each other. That simultaneity is the point rather than a scheduling accident: it is what a platform can do and a venue cannot.
Elevator began in 2025 with First Floor, installed in a working goods lift on the Scheldestraat. The lift is where the name comes from, and it is still a fair description of the method: you get in somewhere, you get out somewhere else, and the room does not belong to you.
