City of the Future
1969
Sculpture, 10 x 71.5 x 8 cm.
Materials: plexi
Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. S0376).
For City of the future from 1969, Van Hoeydonck exclusively uses glass and plexiglas. The work is composed of simple volumes strongly reminiscent of a set of ‘building blocks’. It is a purified maquette, devoid of all details, where people are conspicuous by their absence. In part owing to the use of clear materials, a white, immobile silence seems to hang over this still to be discovered city… a habitable strip awaiting inhabitants. In his cities of the future, Van Hoeydonck’s connection to architecture – something already manifestly present in his early paintings – comes to full expression. With his work, he wishes to bring order out of chaos, like an archeologist does with the past: Paul Van Hoeydonck as (urban) architect for the present... and the visual artist for the future.
