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M HKA reserves its fifth floor for surprising interventions and intimate pop-up presentations. INBOX is a place that inspires and surprises, one that offers us a glimpse into the world of passionate thinkers and doers. With INBOX, M HKA creates a physical space in which the museum addresses often-recurring questions.

In the periods between the various events, we present a selection of our collection works, with particular attention to video art.

INBOX can be visited for free.

The Man Who Thought Everything Was Beautiful

Thousands of people must have observed him, in Antwerp and elsewhere: a man who, wheeling his bike, walked along the streets for years and searched around, sometimes stopped, picked up something and moved on. And then turned back again to pick up something else he first had left unnoticed.

Many will have wondered what inspired him. Did he have a secret talent to find coins? Lost rings, gold brooches, silver earrings? Was he quietly gathering a fortune there?

The harvest of the day, he put in small plastic bags, which he tied off firmly, then put into larger bags that hung from his bike. When he returned home, he stocked his pickings in cardboard boxes. Those boxes came to stand on top of each other. When the space became overloaded, he rented a garage somewhere in the neighbourhood. Every evening he noted his finds and experiences in tiny handwriting in small note books.

His mother understood his obsession and continued to support him until her death. His wife, however, found it difficult to accept and sought advice from a psychiatrist. The latter made up a therapy. When Frank heard about it, he became angry. He was regarded as one of those  squirrels – buzzword hoarders – who are cursed with the irresistible urge to bring all kind of stuff together, to cram their entire habitat with their discoveries. Psychiatry teaches that hoarders become socially isolated as a result of their mania and need help. But Frank Castelyns was a special case.

The typical hoarder is convinced that his things are of practical use and that one day, at the right moment, they will come in handy, even if they are actually completely worn or broken. His collector's mania also focuses on knick-knacks and old-fashioned ornamental objects: he imagines that they are rare and represent or will represent a value. He is the welcome flea market customer, and if really necessary, he can also get rid of his stuff there.

But Frank Castelyns did not visit flea markets and did not possess must-haves or bibelots. Nor did he create collections. In his cluttered depots there was nothing he had bought, nothing that he could pull out with any pride. In practical terms, nothing could be done with it either. It was all completely useless and unsaleable. His things were the rejected of the earth. But he found a misunderstood beauty in them, and furthermore attributed an archaeological value to them, albeit projected in the future. His futile remnants revealed our entire state of mind and lifestyle, and so they deserved a respectful treatment. He saw a parallel with relics of saints: the sole of a sandal, a piece of cloth or a phalanx which, with plenty of pathos, is preserved in a shrine and worshiped for centuries. Mystical in nature too was his view that even the smallest element of his gigantic collection contained the totality, as in the verse of the Eastern-inspired Dutch poet Jan Hendrik Leopold:

In peering through a drop of water's gleam
I saw the oceans of the world were one
and motes of light that capered in a beam
revealed to me the essence of the sun.

Scenes and triptychs

The work material in his depots consisted of squashed cans, crumpled cigarette packs that had been soaked with rain six times, splintered lighters, snippets of candy packaging, torn plastic cups, food remains and other debris that the road sweeper dumps carelessly into his receptacle. He glued them in cardboard boxes that he hung on the wall as bas-reliefs, so that a kind of viewing box was created in which an imaginary scene took place. The composition cost him a lot of thought every time. Although he called himself an adept of Kurt Schwitters and Robert Rauschenberg, he was by no means their epigone. To exclude any salon effect, he avoided classical composition effects and complementary colours. Often, he opted for juxtaposition, subordination or simply free chaos – although it cannot be ruled out that in thàt too, he put narrative or symbolic meaning. Several compositions have the shape of a triptych, as in the Middle Ages. 'I'm a religious artist,' he said in an interview.

He did not reveal the exact significance of his scenes, and if he gave them titles, it were crazy things like The Battle of the Flag-Bearers, Visiting the King with the Pet Dragon, Tomorrow I see Sinterklaas, 'Carnaval d'Andorra' sous patronage the Descartes or Pina Cannot Come and Swim With Us She's Got Her Period . But he stopped doing that because he saw that the title seemed to give the work a right to exist that perhaps it did not always deserve.

There exists (existed?) even a series of boxes that depicted the journey of Apollo XIII to the moon in twelve 'Stations.' Was it because the lunar walkers, like him, picked up all kinds of small things and brought them to earth like invaluable study material? In any case, Castelyns was not to be put off by big themes. When he saw the chance, he also built imposing assemblages that represented Het Vlot van de Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa) or Het Schip van Columbus (Columbus' Ship). In order to make them, he searched sheds and containers, waste lands and demolition sites.

Castelyns's response

Frank knew well that his work could cause aversion and even aggression in the viewer: 'I have often experienced that my work causes hostile reactions, but then I say OK, it may be filthy, but look at the beauty of it all, too.'

He enjoyed a certain status in the Antwerp art world. He was known as a warm and imperturbable personality, well-grounded and blessed with a somewhat dreary yet at times  also sarcastic humour. Belgian artist Guillaume Bijl was a supporter from the very beginning, offering him opportunities in all kinds of artistic projects at home and abroad. And besides him, there were others. His poems, which he declaimed with Willem Elsschot's strict, almost martial tone of voice, were appreciated and were published by Johan Devrome at the Antwerp Academy. The same art school, where Frank studied without ever completing his studies, offered him a platform in its Winter Garden on an open day, which made many future student feel very insecure about the nature of the study they could expect there.

Meanwhile, the Verbeke Foundation in Kemzeke had already offered him a stack of sea containers to store his work in and in the exhibition Lost in Garbage, it reserved an entire room to exhibit the best of his work. But that was it. The art collectors, although hoarders themselves, albeit of a special kind, kept their distance. The museums too, remained shy. Long after Duchamp and Picabia, Magritte, Manzoni and Broodthaers, the respect for art and its sacred seriousness is back again. Adulating language everywhere. So after shit in cans and mussel pots, the ultimate cape, that of street dirt, was cautiously circumvented. No matter how classic and religious Frank F. Castelyns may be, he remained an exponent of the 1960s, who in his own way examined and exposed the ruling order. Will then, once again, a check be put on the artistic ridicule of the financial groups, formerly called the bourgeoisie? However, a Castelyns at Art Dubai would surely create a fuss that no American glitter artist can match.

For more information and photos, please contact: 
Bert De Vlegelaer
Press Officer
E bert.devlegelaer@muhka.be 
T +32 (0)3 260 99 91