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
Hear TH FI TO IN PH Around This Chair, 1977
Installation , 357 x 355 x 366 cm
chair, carpets, black silk tent

"Gold is so mysterious. Someone once said to me that gold is the color from nowhere. The reactions of the people are either like that, very mysterious, or they think it is very decadent or very meaningless. (ugh) But for me, not, because gold takes me more into the infinitely mystical. I rarely think of gold as being decorative. I see it more as spiritual."

From an interview with James Lee Byars by Wolf Günter Thiel (1995), in: ‘James Lee Byars - The White Mass’, Keulen 2004