Urgent Conversations: Athens – Antwerp

    ENELNL

    The exhibitions Urgent Conversations: Athens–Antwerp and Urgent Conversations: Antwerp – Athens are a collaboration between EMST and M HKA, a theoretical and visual dialogue, based on works from the collections of both museums, which includes more than 70 works structured in 22 topics.   

    28.04.2017 - 07.01.2018        

    M HKA, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen - Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerpen

    EMST, National Museum of Contemporary Art - Kallirrois Avenue & Amvr. Frantzi Str., Athens 11743

    Danny Matthys

    Back
    (c)image: M HKA/CC
    Helicopter, 1978
    Danny Matthys
    Photography
    ink, paper

    In the early 1980s Matthys’s work undergoes a remarkable change. His image constructions are no longer systematic and comprehensive. The visual narrative is divided into a composition of fragments and offers an abundance of information. Matthys appropriates images from the world around him, but also from his own work. He transforms them and returns them to us in a new context and a new form. Helicopter is an early example of this new form of composition. The structure of the work is still reminiscent of the horizontal mode of reading typical of his polaroid period. There is still a system in the arrangement, but the sequencing of the images becomes less significant and offers no real support for our understanding. As we look we zigzag from image to image, performing many small comparisons across the surface of the image. The idea of type takes shape in front of our eyes. We don’t perceive a particular helicopter, but the way in which helicopters are perceived.

    Back