M HKA Ensembles

Print, 630 x 410 mm.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK7286_M238_02).

De Vree incorporated photographic material in his poesia visiva mostly in the form of collages, sometimes accompanied by an ironic or satirical commentary, which aims to address the viewer’s conscience and awareness through all sorts of associations. Besides the denunciation of violence and injustice as reported daily by the mass media, De Vree uses his ‘Eros’ theme to focus on the abuse of eroticism and the exploitation of the sensual female body in advertising. Sexuality is treated in the same way. In Some like it hot, De Vree juxtaposes a representation of the Rubens painting The Fur and a photograph of a pin-up from whose hand roll the words ‘some like it hot’. Both the ambiguous sensuality of Rubens’s painting and the ‘brutal exhibitionism’ of the pornography industry are made clear. In this respect, Van Mulders compares De Vree’s poetry to the work of Louis Paul Boon, in which attention for social wrongs also went hand in hand with a strong erotic component.