Hans Theys is a twentieth-century philosopher and art historian. He has written and designed dozens of books on the works of contemporary artists and published hundreds of essays, interviews and reviews in books, catalogues and magazines. All his publications are based on actual collaborations and conversations with artists.

This platform was developed by Evi Bert (M HKA / Centrum Kunstarchieven Vlaanderen) in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (Research group Archivolt), M HKA, Antwerp and Koen Van der Auwera. We also thank Idris Sevenans (HOR) and Marc Ruyters (Hart Magazine).

Dennis Tyfus

Dennis Tyfus - 2018 - Over Knisperende Kniespieren [NL, interview]
Interview , 4 p.




__________

Hans Theys


My Knee’s Pierced Needs
Dennis Tyfus at Middelheim and Pinkie Bowtie



I would like to begin this essay with a modest tribute to Menno Meewis (1954-2012), who after becoming director of Middelheim Museum in 1993 gradually annexed all the parks and other land round about. Keen to show me what he was planning to do with the newly acquired Nachtegalenpark, one day I found myself being driven through the park in a golf cart. Ignoring all the usual footpaths, he slalomed through the wood at speed like an accomplished skater, uphill, downhill, pitilessly flattening the occasional burgeoning plant and shrub that lay in his path. I would like to add that in her collaboration with Dennis Tyfus (°1979), Menno Meewis’ successor Sara Weyns (°1980) is continuing the work at Middelheim in her own way, but in the spirit of her predecessor.

Recently I met the young Canadian fashion designer Holden St George who told me that he got into fashion through skateboarding. “Skating, queerness and fashion are three ways to energize space,” he said. What he meant by that, I think, is that a skateboarder who doesn’t restrict himself to a designated skateboarding area can put to improper use all the objects he encounters in the public space. The skateboarder uses his own secret routes to get around (Michel de Certeau), just as the ruttish or persecuted male homosexual finds an alternative purpose for station halls and dimly-lit public gardens.
In a not dissimilar way, queerness and fashion show us that the world can be different and that we don’t have to submit despondently to the rules of know-alls, schoolmasters and museum directors. Innovative artists demand the right to do things differently and to be different. They regenerate art by not bowing to the pressure of convention. And they do so, not because they want to regenerate art, but because they cannot or will not behave any other way. By claiming the right to deviate from the norm, they not only make room for themselves, but also for others. So their obstinate and contrary approach to ideas and forms also acquires a political dimension, because it shows that the world, or the way we see it, can be flexible. Artists create breathing space.

Dennis Tyfus also came to the art world through skateboarding. He couldn’t skate very well, but he was attracted to the skating culture. He told me this back in 2003, when I saw him at work for the first time in the unheated exhibition space of Lokaal 01, which Vaast Colson had put at his disposal. He was making a large-format drawing on a painted background. Up until then, I had only seen one artist draw with such precision. When several weeks later I heard that the Flemish Commission for Visual Art had informed Tyfus that they didn’t “regard his work as relevant to contemporary art”, I visited and interviewed the then 23-year-old artist. In an article published in NieuwZuid, I defended him and tried to explain to the ladies and gentlemen of the Commission that nobody can know whether a person’s work is relevant to contemporary art (because by definition it escapes the judgement of the so-called experts, who can only base their judgement on what has gone before), but that here we clearly had a fabulous draftsman who was taking a completely new approach. Today, 15 years on, a government institution has at last given the artist carte blanche to work freely. The result is impressive.

For the last 20 years, Tyfus has continuously visited and created spaces where he ‘does his thing’: for example, he has organized concerts and poetic events like the Bamba Night with Daniël the World-famous Botanist. At the invitation of Middelheim, he designed a concrete sculpture, which can also be used as an independently accessible, public meeting place.

Tyfus: “Sara Weyns had sounded me out on several occasions about possible contributions to group exhibitions. One of my proposals was a ballet performance at deSingel which would be called ‘Ballètjes in tomatensaus’ (Ballet pieces in tomato sauce). When she invited me to participate in the group exhibition ‘Experience Traps’, I asked the architects Fvww Architecten to help me design a concrete tiered seating bank concealing a lockable bar underneath. There is also a stage, lighting and electricity. The place is enclosed like a prison, but is accessible both from the museum and the road, so that it can serve as a sculpture and also as a concert space.
I have spent my life looking for places where I can do things. In 1996 I came across VogelVrijStad in Meistraat in Antwerp, a school broken into by squatters who organized events there. It made an impression on me, not least because of all the different kinds of people it attracted: anarchists, the homeless, poets, politicians, artists, punks… Concerts were organized in the cellar. All generations congregated at VogelVrijStad because there was no other venue in the city where you could listen to strange music and rub shoulders with like-minded people. There was de Sorm in Deurne and the Lintfabriek in Kontich, where good concerts were organized, but in the city itself there was only VogelVrijStad. It led in a roundabout way to the creation of Scheld’apen and after that I set up the venues Gunther, Stadslimiet and Pinkie Bowtie, first with Vaast Colson and later with Peter Fengler. Nowadays things are very different in Antwerp. Every day you can go and look at something in a place set up by artists, like Idris Sevenans’ Troebel Neyntje, ABC Kluphuis, Forbidden City, Pink House, etc.
A book has been published to accompany the exhibition. It was compiled by the artist Nico Dockx, who asked me a question every day for a year. As a young man I heard people talk about Nico as a gifted skateboarder who lived in a neighbouring village. Later on we went our separate ways until I bumped into him last year en route to the baker’s and asked him if he would like to interview me for an upcoming solo show at Project Space 1646 in The Hague.”

I ask Nico Dockx (°1974) if he would like to tell us something about the exhibition.

Dockx: “The thing that really struck me – and I am not talking about the work itself, but about what it does to the surroundings and the public –, was the tremendous freshness, the tremendous energy it seemed to release. All kinds of people gathered around the book which you could fill with stamps: elderly men and women, children, but also Luc Tuymans and Anny De Decker who were stamping away enthusiastically. At the private view, lots of people behaved as if they were at a party. There was none of the customary stuffy, negative atmosphere. The works seemed to spark a dynamic energy. It was the same with the installation with the fluttering petrol station flags (‘The Pogo Never Stops’): young and old were carried away with enthusiasm. I hope our book sparks the same dynamic energy among its readers.”

Tyfus and I walk through the park without trying to fathom the deeper meaning of his oeuvre. Soundworks had been placed next to two sculptures which are part of Middelheim’s permanent collection (including Rik Wouters’ ‘Mad Maiden’). They play soundtracks arranged in a loop: noise generated by Tyfus himself, reminiscent of shamanic rituals.

“When I see sculptures, I hear sounds,” he says. “Now everyone can hear them.”
‘The Pogo Never Stops’ installation consists of some ten colourful, petrol station-type ‘tube men’ with drawn faces, which collapse, bend, kneel and then quickly straighten up again. In the press release, I read that they make the grassy expanse look like a festival site. Never having set eyes on a festival site, I can only see the installation as a new form of sculpture or presence in a sculpture park.
“Every time I saw an inflatable skydancer pogoing at a filling station, I heard ‘Burn Your House Down’ by Wolf Eyes,” Tyfus tells me. “Here the music is made by the compressors.”
On a spot among the trees, we find three sculptures with realistic rubber heads, very well made, being bombarded with automatically launched tennis balls and forced to listen to Goa trance.
“That is awful house music, danced to by people with dreadlocks who would go off to the woods to eat magic mushrooms. 1990s hippie shit.”
In the Braem pavilion we find a magnificent, 20-metre-long, u-shaped table where the spectators can use 160 stamps to personalize a 160-page blank book. It is one of the most powerful sculptural responses to this magnificent pavilion I have ever seen.
“I am always looking for ways to spread my drawings round the world,” says Tyfus. “To start with, it was usually record covers. Later on, I came up with the ‘No Choice Tattoos’. This book of stamps is a new way of having my drawings travel and turning them into something more tangible.”

On show at Pinkie Bowtie are crayon drawings by Tyfus. When he gave me a guided tour of the first instalment of this exhibition last year, it seems I was the first to notice that Tyfus had drawn volumes for the first time. “I was fed up with those flat drawings,” he told me. “It came about when I was unwell and lying in bed. Someone had given me a box of crayons and suddenly there I was with a new sort of drawing.”


Montagne de Miel, November 3rd 2018
 

Translated by Alison Mouthaan-Gwillim