default

This summer, to counterbalance the letter angle, the M HKA will be displaying artists’ books as carriers of images – books as objects. With "not done!", M HKA presented the first museum exhibition of its kind, highlighting and questioning the artist book's status with regards to a more totalizing view of art practice. “Not done!” thus shows the other side of books, about books as carriers of images. John BALDESSARI, Robert BARRY, Dara BIRNBAUM, Balthasar BURKHARD, Messieurs DELMOTTE, Peter DOWNSBROUGH, Jan FABRE, Kendell GEERS, Dominique GONZALEZ-FOERSTER, Sol LEWITT, Ken LUM, Paul MORRISON, Antoni MUNTADAS, Joe SCANLAN, Eran SCHAERF, Diana THATER, Lawrence WEINER

not done! (The ARTists’ book)
John BALDESSARI, Robert BARRY, Dara BIRNBAUM, Balthasar BURKHARD, Messieurs DELMOTTE, Peter DOWNSBROUGH, Jan FABRE, Kendell GEERS, Dominique GONZALEZ-FOERSTER, Sol LEWITT, Ken LUM, Paul MORRISON, Antoni MUNTADAS, Joe SCANLAN, Eran SCHAERF, Diana THATER, Lawrence WEINER .
Curator : Kurt Vanbelleghem
With an introductory survey of historical artists' books and publications compiled by Johan Deumens.

Performance

Kendell Geers , THE DEVIL NEVER RESTS....... (6 june 2004) 



This summer, to counterbalance the letter angle, the M HKA will be displaying artists’ books as carriers of images – books as objects. With "not done!", M HKA presents the first museum exhibition of its kind, highlighting and questioning the artist book's status with regards to a more totalizing view of art practice. “Not done!” thus shows the other side of books, about books as carriers of images. Who says books have to be read anyway? Some books are indeed made merely to be looked at. As such, the M HKA uses the present as a diving-board into the coming historic exhibitions, organised by ABC. Flemish painting may have found its origin in books (e.g. the Breviarium Mayer van den Berg), but Plantin-Moretus too relied on images and letters for its activities.
Books volatilize – into stories and memories – but they are, after all, objects. All through modernity, artists have viewed books as such. To them, books are a way of creating art, not unlike canvas or videotapes.
So far, the art world has been less aware of this than the artists themselves, and artists’ books barely fetch the mind-bogging prices of unique masterpieces.
The exhibition revolves around the Imschoot Publishers’ International collection (more than one hundred artists’ books), that is currently being picked up by the New York Moma, the Los Angeles Moca and the London Tate, but was barely given the time of day in Belgium until recently, when it was acquired by the Antwerp M HKA.
A number of those books will be placed inside the artists’ oeuvre.
Books as autonomous works of art: an exhibition for browsers and strollers alike.

This exhibition is part of the programm of ABC 2004, Antwerp Book Capital 2004 and realised in collaboration with ABC 2004. It is based on the fund of Imschoot Publishers