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

    Paul De Vree

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    (c)image: M HKA
    Wie straft wie?, 1969
    Paul De Vree
    Photography , 70 x 85 cm
    photo emulsion, canvas

    Several pieces in the first important collection featuring concrete-visual poetry, *Zimprovisaties*, display a degree of engagement. This is due to the fact that this collection gathers together works created between 1963 and 1968. Several of them tie in with the concrete and visual poetry in terms of technique, i.e., the ‘typogram’. In *Wie straft wie?*, De Vree uses the typewriter to draw several flags, including those of the US, Japan, the UK, France and Russia. Above the flags he has typed the sentence ‘right or wrong, it’s my country’, and centred across the middle of the canvas, in bold letters, ‘wie straft wie?’. In this poem De Vree takes aim at the nationalism and imperialism of the superpowers.

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