JAMES LEE BYARS, THE PERFECT KISS

The Perfect Kiss, presenting more than one hundred works, is the first retrospective exhibition by James Lee Byars in Belgium and simultaneously also a tribute to Byars as a European artist, a Belgian artist, even an Antwerp artist. Byars traveled for ten years between New York and Kyoto before arriving in Europe in 1969, invited by Anny De Decker and Bernd Lohaus for an exhibition at the Wide White Space Gallery in Antwerp (April 18 - May 7 1969). Byars quickly became part of a group of artists and art lovers around this groundbreaking gallery - Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Jef Cornelis, Nicole and Herman Daled, Isi Fiszman, and many others - and became a prominent figure in the European art scene with participations in five documenta's from 1972 until his death.