Danny Devos: A Study for the Happiest Man Alive
Danny Devos (DDV) A Study for the happiest Man Alive
Exhibition January 27th – March 4th, 2012
Danny Devos (DDV), °Vilvoorde, 1959. Lives in Antwerp, Belgium – works everywhere.
Danny Devos is an influential Belgian artist working in performance, body art, installations and industrial music since the late 1970s. He explores existential, social and artistic border situations and confrontation with his audience. DDV created 160 performances, many dealing with endurance, personal danger and psychological terror.
His 1990s sculptures and installations are inspired by true crime, for which he corresponded with several multiple murderers in Belgium and the U.S.A.
One of DDV’s most extensive pieces is “Diggin’ for Gordon”, a tribute to Gordon Matta-Clark which has been going on for over five years by now. Several ‘mash-up’ pieces evolved into the fictitious “Bastard Art Gallery” which hosted performances, installations and online projects. His social radicalism about art practice and the imperialism of art institutions led him to investigate similarities between the 1970s American avant-garde and the radical city guerrilla of the Baader Meinhof Group and the Black Panthers. This resulted in controversial web-campaigns, pamphlets, posters, performances and street art actions as the “Bastard Art Gruppe”.
“A Study for the Happiest Man Alive”, specially conceived for the Annie Gentils Gallery, consists of a large wooden palisade propped into the whole ground floor of the gallery.It shows items related to DDV’s “Birth(+)Fact(x)Death(-) Calendar”, a project going on since 1985 in print, on blogs and as a website. Large printouts for each day of the exhibition form the basis of a complex maze of various paraphernalia referring to both actual facts from the calendaras fictitious links to events and objects from DDV’s personal archives:
http://www.birthfactdeathcalendar.net and http://www.performan.org
On the first floor DDV shows excerpts of two repetitious digital photo related projects. “On Kawara is not Dead” compiles 211 photographs of newspaper obituaries that were posted on an online blog for four years.
“Roadside Temples and Dhammapada Verses” compiles 423 photographs DDV made mostly while traveling in Asia and Europe in the past ten years.
1. The first large catalogue of DDV’s performance work is presented during he opening and available in the gallery:
Perfoman - DDV 1979-2011
Danny Devos - 160 Performances 230x300mm - 320 pages - 275 photos b/w + colour,
12-page interview by Jacoba Bruneel. Text in English & Dutch.
150g/m2 multidesign white, smyth sewn - hardcover suede coquillage + blind stamp + dust jacket
979 copies + 21 signed and numbered
isbn: 978-9-0811-4263-2
retail price: 59,- €
Special edition: 250,- €
2. Birth(+)Fact(x)Death(-)Calendar, 1985-2012
Edition de luxe of 10 signed and numbered copies in black-linen box with 38 A3 wax prints on paper
from data 26 January through 3 March 2012
750,- €
Press release DDV, A Study for the Happiest Man Alive