Roni Horn, Such 3, 2012, pigment and varnish on paper, 170.2 x 168.9 cm © Xavier Hufkens Gallery


'If you were to ask me what I do, I would say I draw – this is the primary activity – and that all my work has this in common regardless of idiom or material.’ 
(Roni Horn in a letter to Paulo Herkenhoff, 2003)


Roni Horn, Must 49, 1985, pigment and varnish on paper, 22.9 x 36.8 cm © Xavier Hufkens Gallery

'These works move beyond the limitations of their medium and instead explore the materiality of colour and the sculptural potential of drawing.' (1)


(1) Selected Drawings 1984 - 2012, Press, Xavier Hufkens Gallery
2012, October 25 - November 24






© Marc Nagtzaam, A Small Set of Examples, 98,3 x 67,7 cm (2012)

Nagtzaam makes drawings. Using graphite and the occasional colored pencil, he works primarily in black and white and in varying formats of paper, from small to middling, which are never smaller than a magazine page and rarely, if ever exceed the format of the human body (except for in the rare cases of wall drawings). The visual repertoire of the drawings ranges from a kind of hard-edge all-over abstraction to the reproduction of the written word. Seemingly idiosyncratic grids of differing modes and sizes abound, while exploded lattices of linear markings stream across surfaces of paper with an apparent randomness, and circular, all-over doodles are apotheosized into meticulous labors of graphic splendor. The language pieces generally consist of two types: one of which features the title of the work or a group of potential titles collaged together at random and drawn out on paper, and the other which features language culled from art magazines, copied and written on the paper in seemingly coherent columns. The art magazine language drawings are marked with all the imperfect and uneven personality of gesture which one normally expects from pencil on paper, and which is almost entirely absent from the much more controlled geometric drawings that comprised the rest of the artist's practice. This makes for a paradox, and consequently, the kind of tension that essentially animates Nagtzaam's output. Proceeding as such, he manages to render the highly impersonal language of art journalism manifestly personal-- a language moreover that could hardly be more codified; as codified, in fact, and therefore as ineluctably borrowed as abstraction-- while he to all intents and purposes, submits a rather personal process of abstraction to the alienating anonymity of the grid.(1)

Lecture, Campus Congres, Kerkstraat 45, Antwerp
2012, November 14, 6 pm
Free entrance


(1) Chris Sharp, Paris 2010
© Ante Timmermans, NR.5 (LEITER), 117 x 78 cm, oilstick op print, 2012

'The motor behind Ante Timmermans' artistic production is the routines imposed by society. In his work we can discover a microscopic analysis of human activities as much as an all- encompassing universal synthesis of philosophical thoughts. In the large drawings it looks like a complex chaos dominates. However on closer observation, as in an ants nest, we can recognise repeating structures and patterns. Ante maps the everyday rut that the French call 'metro-boulot-dodo' in a seemingly scientific way. Even his own uncontrolled pencil-marks can be seen as an affirmation or disavowal of his own routine actions, as a release mechanism or programmed compulsiveness. In other drawings the city or some aspects of the city are more explicitly presented as symbols of our habit-controlled behaviour. The skyline of a big city becomes a shaky tower of Babel, does it persist through its own absurdity or through its manipulative capacities?' (1)

Lecture, Campus Congres, Kerkstraat 45, Antwerp
2012, December 5, 6 pm
Free entrance


(1) Text (fragment): Tanguy Eeckhout Translation (Dutch-English): Literal 2006


notes from the lecture
A remarkable question from one of the students for Ante: 'Do you believe in reincarnation?' Ante was 1 second silent, surprised, but answered short and clear 'no'.