Urgent Conversations: Athens – Antwerp

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    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

    Luc Tuymans

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    (c)image: M HKA
    Ballroom Dancing, 2007
    Luc Tuymans
    Print , 1050 x 750 mm
    ink on paper

    In Ballroom Dancing, Luc Tuymans indicts American policy post 9/11.  The picture is of a spruced up young couple dancing, everything apparently clean and proper.  But this is mere façade, and Tuymans wants to pierce it.

    “I always took violence as a basic underlying structure in my work. The element of being afraid is a specific fascination.”

    “I don’t think art is derived from art, I think art is derived from reality.”

    The reality of Luc Tuymans' work is always a double one.   At first sight we have a graceful, aesthetic and classic image but at the same time there are subtle references to post 9/11 or the era of Bush and the neocons.

    In Ballroom Dancing, portrayed as well is the regression of American society of that period, the return to an overt form of conservatism.  The classic, blissful, romantic and innocent ballroom dance à la Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers, takes place above a marble floor with the seal of the state of Texas, where George Bush had been governor, where whites strut rednecked and Christian fundamentalism flourishes.

     

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