Home»All Photographs»ART»Art: MuHKA - Optimundus in Antwerp, Feb 2013

A walk through the "Optimundus" exhibition by Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys in MuHKA Antwerp. If you don't want my opinion about the art itself, STOP reading now.
I thought the show was a ramshackle collection of infantile rubbish and clumsy concoctions, meagerly justified with an overdose of utterly pretentious navel-gazing.
I lost interest in the meandering self-explanations very quickly, because a strong feeling stuck to me of looking at the "Emperor's New Clothes".
A separate large space, accessible through a door with no caption and filled only with talk and simple schematics, was emblematic in that respect. The main thing on display there, were the visitors themselves.
Questions remain: whether the artists created their utopia in earnest, or to make the art world gaze into a Deep Dark Truthful Mirror. "The Importance of NOT Being Earnest."
And also: whether the museum decided to host this show (dedicating no less than a whole floor) because it bought into the artistic pretension or to flaunt the meta-artistic mockery.
This double dubio is a good thing, I presume, because it invites and stimulates both serious and hilarious debate about the meaning and merits of contemporary art.
QED and "Mission Accomplished" (as it always is, if you gaze long enough and from enough angles, until your eyes hurt). With that many options available, It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane.
In any case, the hopscotch installations provided an interesting backdrop for images of puzzled viewer interaction. So I guess I liked it after all, for my own selfish reasons.