Royal Museum of Fine Ars Antwerp
Curators:
Annelien De Troij (M HKA)
Adriaan Gonnissen (KMSKA)
This exhibition is a collaboration between the Antwerp partner museums KMSKA and M HKA (Royal Museum of Fine Arts and Museum of Contemporary Art). As a driving force of the international avant garde, Jef Verheyen (1932–1984) occupies an important position in the European art world. In the late 1950s the art of painting arrives at a “zero point” in part thanks to his vision.
Verheyen developed an inimitable monochrome painting technique by layering such thin layers of paint over each other that they seem to be wafted onto the canvas. And so the painting became a contemplative space: a window on the infinite, an invitation to daydream, stare into the void or – more conceptually – focus our gaze. His whole life, Verheyen tried to reconcile tradition with innovation. His modernist adventure encompassed ceramic experimentation, eastern philosophy and the art of the Flemish masters. Jef Verheyen. Window on Infinity not only shows the substantive and stylistic evolution of Le Peintre Flamant, the name he gave himself, but also presents his work in dialogue with his friends and/or sources of inspiration: Gianni Dova, Lucio Fontana, Günther Uecker, Otto Piene, Hermann Goepfert, Guy Mees, Yves Klein, Walter Leblanc, but also Jozef Peeters, Constant Permeke and James Ensor. Since Verheyen bridges the collections of KMSKA and M HKA, the curators also invite four contemporary artists with a clear connection to his exploration of light and space. Especially for this exhibition, Ann Véronica Janssens, Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen, Kimsooja and Pieter Vermeersch (re)create in-situ installations.
