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David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Guy Mees (1935-2003) in THE UPPER ROOM at the gallery’s London location—the first solo presentation of the artist’s work in the United Kingdom. A leading figure of the Belgian postwar avant-garde, Mees is known for his radical and poetic approach to space, form, and material. On view will be works from the artist’s key bodies of work, spanning from the 1960s through the 1990s, that collectively demonstrate both the formal breadth and conceptual consistency of his singular oeuvre.
Mees first gained recognition as a member of the Nieuwe Vlaamse School (New Flemish School) that formed in Antwerp in 1960 who, thanks to their contact with many of the artists affiliated with the international ZERO network, mounted a number of group shows throughout Europe during their brief existence. It was during this period that Mees developed his breakthrough series “Verloren Ruimte” (“Lost Space”), 1960–1967, which comprised wall-mounted monochromatic panels and freestanding neon objects, both of which were covered in lace. This early body of work–titled in reference to the artist’s desire to shatter pictorial space–constitutes a programmatic assertion of Mees’s working method, which was relentlessly experimental and deliberately open-ended and malleable.
