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

James Lee Byars

(c)image: M HKA
The Tomb of James Lee Byars, 1986
Object , 100 x 100 x 100 cm
globe consisted of lime sand brick

"Well, I like beauty. I mean I do not have Plato’s definition before me now, but the sphere was one of the things he used in talking about it. If you have an interest and time, if you look into Plato you will see this magnificent definition of the beauty of the sphere where all points are equidistant in the mathematics of the sphere. The surface is smooth and the surface is polished. He holds this up as one of the great examples of beauty and then goes through the cosmological idea of the earth and the religious interpretation. I am very susceptible to such ideas of beauty."

Source: interview by Wolf-Günter Thiel on 6 March 1995.