collection summer 2004

Summer 2004 focuses on a selection of works by the Belgian artists Honoré d’ O and Toon Tersas, very much like two lines zigzagging through the collection. This will be the first time the core of Tersas' significant legacy will be shown to the public.

The presentation of the MuHKA collection changes every season. Part of the exhibited works stays and is regrouped with newly chosen works so that the collection and the previously showns works can be viewed in a different way again.

Summer 2004 focuses on a selection of works by the Belgian artists Honoré d’ O and Toon Tersas, very much like two lines zigzagging through the collection. This will be the first time the core of Tersas' significant legacy will be shown to the public. Additionally, a series of fragments will be shown from Honoré d' O's impressive ensemble “All the details extended, en fractures recomposées”. Some two years ago it was first presented in the museum's smaller-scale upper rooms, as if in rough-cut depot style.

The MuHKA has recently acquired the essential legacy of the Belgian artist Toon Tersas, pseudonym for Antoon Keersmaekers (Mol, 1924 - 1995). As an artist, Tersas led a solitary existence, and only shortly before his death in 1995 did Tersas get to enjoy the recognition his work so forcefully deserved. Largely self-taught, Tersas loathed all established values and was passionately interested in all matters concerning art, history, politics and society.

Toon Tersas’ oeuvre could be approached both from the angle of its direct and broad social interest and from his attention for the creation of images: Tersas absorbed many contemporary events and news facts into his wayward paintings, drawings, gouaches and artist books, offering a critical analysis of the many trajectories through which the mass media control and exert influence over the way in which these facts and events are communicated. Tersas took a particular liking for letters, words, texts, hand-written or hand-painted copies, making for - as far as pure form is concerned - a contemporary calligraphy of sorts. The coherence of texts, images and content bestow an incredibly contemporary character upon Toon Tersas’ oeuvre.

Apart from the few early objects, the MuHKA shows the works on paper which make the oeuvre by Toon Tersas so interesting. They often have the form of books, which, however, at the sametime have been conceived to function as separate folios, as works attached to the wall.

collection summer 2004

Künstler: Vito Acconci, Guillaume Bijl, Christian Boltanski, Sergej Bratkow, Honoré d´O, Paul de Vree, Braco Dimitrijevic, Marlene Dumas, Jimmie Durham, Robert Filliou, Andrea Fraser, Jef Geys, Dan Graham, Keith Haring, Anish Kapoor, Joseph Kosuth, Bertrand Lavier, Cady Noland, Anatoli Osmolovski, Kerim Ragimov, Rong Rong & Inri, Wilhelm Sasnal, Cindy Sherman, Toon Tersas, James Turrell, Uri Tzaig, Lawrence Weiner