M HKA Ensembles

Photography

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. S0321).

Danny Matthys’ oeuvre includes diverse media such as photography, installation art, video, painting, assemblage and sculpture.  In his work he reconnoiters his surrounding environment.  He explores and analyzes this milieu, in the broadest sense of the word.  He scans the physical space; he studies and systematizes it.  The laying bare of structures is, however, always more important than the aesthetic characteristics.  Matthys wishes the viewer to become aware of the complexity of our ways of seeing.  From this vantage point, the work may be seen as a formalized investigation into the process of perception. 

The work Sint-Bavopad [Sint-Bavo footpath] abandons a strict horizontal, serial structure.  The images are constructed like a triangle; with the apex and in the separate photographs as well, there is a certain verticality.  Alongside his interest in the structures of various media, Danny Matthys handles structures in a more general sense.  Structures created from out of a social situation, things that we're confronted by daily, like a footpath that one decides to follow... or forsake.