M HKA Ensembles

Photography, 24 x 84 cm.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. S0318_001).

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. 

As a visual artist, Danny Matthys focuses on a typically visual problem: the quest for a form that makes the time- and space dimensions of perception visible.  So, for example, a photograph is by definition a flat reproduction of a frozen moment, and inherent here is the proposition of the space-time problematic.  In Vertikalen, begrenzing van een weiland [Verticals, Limits of a Meadow], as well, the artist sets out to create a design that will render these dimensions readable.

His work can also be seen as a systematic search for a design-structure that specifically connects with the medium used for perception.  So doing, the traditional distinction between form and content melts away.  The content of Matthys' work is found precisely in this making visible of the medium-'imposed' form.