perfect ratios

Six artists create ten unique works in A4 format. The idea originates from Jan Hoet, who at the time went around artists’ studios armed with a stack of paper to support his museum by selling their drawings.

An A4 is a small miracle in its handiness: no matter how many times you fold it in half, it retains its original proportions. Every two weeks, a work by a different artist is added to the series and will be available for sale at the front desk and via MDD’s webshop for € 750.

26.04
Kasper De Vos
Modus Incognito, 2023

Kasper De Vos uses the striking colour palette of a plane tree’s bark for the sixth and final series of perfect ratios. The plane tree is so omnipresent in the cityscape because it provides shade, but especially because the tree is resistant to pollution.

In an agonisingly long process of cutting shapes and sticking them together in ways that look perfectly natural, that seem neither too plain nor too artificial, Kasper De Vos imitates patterns found in nature – exactly as military camouflage aims to do. The work thus pursues the oldest question in art: how to imitate nature?

12.04
Natasja Mabesoone
A, I love you like a love song baby, 2023

For the fifth series of perfect ratios, Natasja Mabesoone spreads the line A, I love you like a love song baby across 10 sheets of paper in swirling handwriting. The work is an ode to the clever format of the A4, as a love letter inspired by the repetitive Selena Gomez hit Love You Like a Love Song.

The images within the words are either reduced or blown up on hand-drawn kitschy stationery, just as A paper sizes fold from the enlargements A0, A1, A2 and A3 to the reductions A5, A6, A7, A8 and A9.

29.03
Magali Reus
Kool, 2023

Magali Reus creates the fourth series of perfect ratios: the numbers zero to nine are plotted according to a self-made font drawn from shredded red cabbage shapes.

The font designed by Reus continues her longstanding interest in calligraphy, often testing out the tipping point where writing becomes drawing and where it reaches the limit of legibility.

12.03
Dieter Durinck
The Return, 2023

With The Return, Dieter Durinck creates the third series for perfect ratios. The drawings contain recurring motifs of his painterly practice: images of hands from packaging materials, figures of a tube as a constructing element, and contours of traced paint pots.

The work employs various techniques, from drawing and printmaking to painting.

01.02
Marie Cloquet
Study for a Shelter, 2023

Marie Cloquet creates the second series of perfect ratios: a series of shelters executed in the same scale. The work prolongs her research into improvised architectural sheds for animals.

It is printed on silver gelatine (silver bromide), a method that marked the beginning of modern photography in the late 19th century, in this case, reworked with watercolour.