EXTRA MUROS: Visite Herzele – Beyond words
City of the Future, 1969
For City of the future from 1969, Van Hoeydonck exclusively uses glass and plexiglas. The work is composed of simple volumes strongly reminiscent of a set of ‘building blocks’. It is a purified maquette, devoid of all details, where people are conspicuous by their absence. In part owing to the use of clear materials, a white, immobile silence seems to hang over this still to be discovered city… a habitable strip awaiting inhabitants. In his cities of the future, Van Hoeydonck’s connection to architecture – something already manifestly present in his early paintings – comes to full expression. With his work, he wishes to bring order out of chaos, like an archeologist does with the past: Paul Van Hoeydonck as (urban) architect for the present... and the visual artist for the future.