M HKA gaat digitaal

Met M HKA Ensembles zetten we onze eerste échte stappen in het digitale landschap. Ons doel is met behulp van nieuwe media de kunstwerken nog beter te kaderen dan we tot nu toe hebben kunnen doen.

We geven momenteel prioriteit aan smartphones en tablets, m.a.w. de in-museum-ervaring. Maar we zijn evenzeer hard aan het werk aan een veelzijdige desktop-versie. Tot het zover is vind je hier deze tussenversie.

M HKA goes digital

Embracing the possibilities of new media, M HKA is making a particular effort to share its knowledge and give art the framework it deserves.

We are currently focusing on the experience in the museum with this application for smartphones and tablets. In the future this will also lead to a versatile desktop version, which is now still in its construction phase.

Oberreichskriegsanwalt [Senior Attorney in the War Office], 1985

Drawing, 65 x 50 cm.

©image: M HKA

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK7465_M320).

Oberreichskriegsanwalt (Senior Attorney in the War Office) is one of the diptychs by Toon Tersas in the M HKA collection. These idiosyncratic diptychs are visually quite similar: the left side is filled-in with (calligraphic) text, the right side with a graphic image. The technique, washed ink on paper, is also the same. Nonetheless, they constitute no completed or closed series: each work stands on its own and different combinations are possible. Tersas sees a clear connection between text and image. Often his starting point is text: a newspaper article or something else he’s accidentally comes across in his reading, but writings of celebrated writers and philosophers are references as well. Then he ‘intervenes’ vis-à-vis the text, both in terms of content and form.

The artist also isolates text-fragments, combines them and adds his own, very critical commentary. In this way he prevents a too-simple understanding of his work: the viewer must take his time to decipher the works and to search for possible interpretations. Tersas himself says that he doesn’t want to convey a message, that he’s just interested in form and the letters’ line. And yet, the meaning of the texts and commentaries is crucial: form and content, image and interpretation are inextricably linked. Tersas’s personal history serves as the foundation for his recurring themes. His fascination for Germany, the German language and, for example, Nazism in the case of Oberreichskriegsanwalt, harks back to his period of forced-labor in Germany as an 18 year-old during WWII. Tersas wanted to lay the world bare, remove its mask. According to his widow, he lived “in a constant state of rage about the state of the world”. He vented his dissatisfaction with himself and time’s inexorable essence through his works. His working method (like copying by hand) is a very conscious reaction against the speed of the world we live in.

Add to your list

Media

>Obrreichskriegsanwalt (1)

>Obrreichskriegsanwalt (2)

Artist

> Toon Tersas.

Exhibitions & Ensembles

> Exhibition: The collection XXXIII – The Collection as a Character. M HKA, Antwerpen, 07 June 2013 - 22 September 2013.

> Ensemble: Collectie Vlaamse Gemeenschap.

> Ensemble: NUCLEUS.

No image

> Ensemble: M HKA_DEFAULT_WORKS.