by Bart van Nuys is a loner, a multidisciplinary artist and interior designer, as well as an art and antiques dealer. His home, a three-story townhouse in the center of Antwerp, built in 1856, is a testament to his creative spirit.
“I model the space and ‘paint’ it with objects. I look at a space like a piece of paper and fill it with a 3D composition. It’s intuitive, a neon light here, a touch of fur there, light here, darker there. I try to fill the paper, to tune the space, until a moment comes when I think: there, I’ve found it.”
Van Nuys shares his home with his partner Sachli Gholamalizad, the Iranian-born actor, director and curator, and their young daughter Rumi Aimes. Dutch-born Van Nuys studied traditional printmaking and etching at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, skills he continues to explore alongside paintings that distort spatial perception. The house is filled with his work—an etching of a cowboy hat is framed in the fireplace’s original wood surround, an acrylic stone floats on the landing wall, a wooden stiletto with blood-red paint on the toe poses somberly on the mantelpiece (van Nuys painted it after seeing a play in which the protagonist kicks her husband to death).
Handwritten lyrics by Sachli’s extended family from the Grammy-winning unofficial Iranian protest anthem “Baraye” (Because) by now-imprisoned singer Shervin Hajipour decorate the fireplace.
The story begins with the staircase, which is located in the middle of the building and divides the house symmetrically into two halves, with the rooms detaching from each other. The spiral staircase winds its way to the top floor, where Van Nuys designed a glass greenhouse over the roof. Today it fills the entire building with light.
The wide staircase is painted in an emerald green sheen. On the ground floor, a tree trunk originally from a flooded forest in the Belgian Ardennes was salvaged by van Nuys and shaped into a coat rack: “I want to leave it high, as a reference to the tree it once was.”
Van Nuys made few changes to the form of the house, aside from the greenhouse roof and removing several false ceilings, preferring to work with the original structure. “I didn’t want any nonsense modernism, this house has character and distinctive parts that you can’t get past, like the staircase and a huge baroque fireplace. I didn’t want to tear down walls; I like the separate rooms as they connect me to the origin of the building. For me, design is everything [about] Gut feeling.”
The original floorboards were painted with a homemade formula of black pigment, watercolor and matte oil, while the walls, plastered with a traditional mixture of chalk, sand and horsehair, were sanded and treated with another secret Van Nuys formula for protection.
On the first floor, a mid-century armoire sits on a generous landing, with neon lighting inside. Designed by van Nuys, the armoire reflects his penchant for a variety of genres, eras and styles. As a child of the 1980s, he loves postmodern, futuristic and obscure references: A rubber hand adorns the mantel, a plastic child’s torso adorns a bathroom, a giant wooden sword adorns a wall, and the guest bedroom is backlit by a large, blue neon sign he brought back from a brand shoot.
“I like to come across pieces that are in between, these obscure, postmodern, fun design and interior design elements,” he says—like the disconnected gas stove that has been repurposed as a marble-topped side table, the cube mirror he designed to reflect his artwork on the opposite wall, or the surreal painting of a man looking into a mirror with his reflection painted over (a prop from a surrealist Belgian TV show).
The guest bedroom and living room are located off the landing. In the living room, a custom white bouclé sofa invites you to relax next to stacks of records and a cocktail cabinet full of vintage glassware – Van Nuys is a passionate bartender.
The master bedroom on the top floor has two zinc oculus windows, small round portholes with wooden handles designed by Van Nuys that pop out and let light in. On the outside, the windows are printed with “H” and “I” so the house shouts “hello” to everyone who passes by.
Inspiration for Van Nuys’ interiors comes from a variety of sources: his love of the work of cartoonist Moebius (Jean Giraud); years of immersion in the LA desert rave scene and Burning Man; living in Ibiza, Paris, Lisbon, Mexico and Argentina. When he returned to Antwerp, he set up an art gallery, hosted pop-up supper clubs, fashion shows and infamous club nights in a renovated house in the red light district. His work has morphed into the world of interior design, styling and trading in antiques and unique one-off pieces, as well as his own art and furniture design.
“This is where my passion for decorating and styling really came together,” he says. “This house has allowed me to combine everything I’ve learned and collected over the years, merging art and design to create an emotional and artistic environment.”
@bartvannuys
