Denmark: anarchives

How many newspapers and magazines do people throw out every day? How many unread masterpieces appear on your bookshelf? How many old exams and assignments are gathering dust in the attics of schools? For 50 years, the Belgian artist Denmark – the pseudonym of Marc Robbroeckx – has transformed tonnes of printed paper into art. He creates sculptures and installations using books, newspapers, and magazines. His main ingredient is always paper – cut, pressed, stacked, or folded. Since the early seventies, Denmark has been cutting up, dissecting, and (re)assembling books, magazines, and newspapers. His archive installations are a critical reaction to the overload of information we are confronted with daily, opposing the abundance of information, symbolised by the gigantic masses of discarded – and often unused – paper. These surplus newspapers, magazines, books, and archives are cut up, folded, glued, bound, pressed, sanded, and ground,… by the artist to create new visual archives, no longer for consulting but purely for viewing beauty as resistance to excess. 'anarchives' provides a sober and in-depth overview of the artist's many years of practice. Text in English, French and Dutch. AUTHOR: Johan Pas is dean of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, School of Arts of the AP University College. Pas holds a PhD in art history and is a lecturer, author and curator. His research focuses on exhibition and publication history of 20th century avant-gardes. He also collects and studies artists' publications. In 2015 he founded CRAP, the Collection for Research on Artists' Publications. In 2017 his most recent book, Artists' Publications: The Belgian Contribution (Koenig Books, London) was published. SELLING POINTS: . The ideas of rereading and recycling are both central to Denmark the Artist's work . In looking for the essence, Denmark developed a unique, artistic approach, that would gradually include print, media, such as books, newspapers, and magazines, and folding, screwing, and sanding them, gluing them together, freezing them, and preserving them in water, gelatin, or paraffin. . Denmark is targeting not only the media industry, but also the art world, and in that sense, his work echoes the institutional critic prevalent in the 1970s 331 colour illustrations

About the Author :
Johan Pas is dean of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, School of Arts of the AP University College. Pas holds a PhD in art history and is a lecturer, author and curator. His research focuses on exhibition and publication history of 20th century avant-gardes. He also collects and studies artists' publications. In 2015 he founded CRAP, the Collection for Research on Artists' Publications. In 2017 his most recent book, Artists' Publications: The Belgian Contribution (Koenig Books, London) was published.