Jan Cox

1972

Painting, 127 x 159 cm.
Materials: acrylic on canvas

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp / Donated by Adriaan Raemdonck, 2014 (Inv. no. S0491_25).

Jan Cox’s oeuvre is profoundly impacted by his experiences as a young person of the German Nazi regime. This is the horror he acted against throughout his career. His works are usually characterized by compositions with a magical, surreal atmosphere, with references to ‘classical’ themes such as violence, cruelty, and vulnerability. In Oh! Those Voices, Boston Cox combines the experience of daily life with flashes of memories and feelings. These visions, that might seem to have been induced by intoxication, are not actual phantasms but the ghosts of death and doom, like those we encounter in stories from the Bible and in Greek mythology. Likewise, in Ukraine, the traumatic experience and horrors of war are melting into everyone's daily life – from doom scrolling when reading the news, to the sudden reminders, that are capable of ruining rare moments of tranquility in a flash.