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

Hugo Roelandt

(c)photo: M HKA, 2016
Zonder titel, schoenen in plaaster / Untitled, Shoes in Plaster (Solo-Performance Stadtarchiv Kassel), 1977
Object , 2 x (28.5 x 39 cm)
cardboard, plaster, shoes

Solo-Performance Stadtarchiv, in the fringes of the official programme of Documenta 6 in Kassel, 1977

Remake for 10 years New Reform, Oud Hospitaal, Aalst, 1988 

Roelandt was never represented by a commercial gallery. He was not even interested in selling his work. Roger D’Hondt tells the anecdote that after the artist’s 1977 performance in Kassel a collector so insisted on buying the remains of it (a pair of old shoes in a box full of plaster) that Roelandt finally consented – in order to stop the nagging. In the artist’s archive two similar boxes were found – the remains of a tryout and a remake. Yet these are clearly exceptions; very few artefacts remain of his performances and installations. For Roelandt, art was always a performance, a temporary event, whose remains only have documentary value. (Marc Holthof, 2016)