In international terms, visual artist Hans Op de Beeck is one of the most high profile young artists of the moment. He works across a broad artistic spectrum, ranging from installations and sculptures through video and photography to drawings. The monograph On Vanishing is the result of a collaboration between the artist and the authors Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley. The book presents a wide selection of the artist's work from the past ten years. The approach adopted does not differentiate between media or dates, but strives to group together themes and perspectives. The book in turn therefore becomes a visual space, and offers a contemporary perspective which is, perhaps, analogous to that of an exhibition. Hans Op de Beeck's images do not pretend to be new, but call upon the viewer's ability to invoke them as familiar-seeming memories; this mnemonic aspect appeals to the power of recognition in communal events. Finding a path remains our own responsibility. Hans Op de Beeck (1969) studied art in Brussels and Amsterdam and was resident at the P.S.1 Studio Program in New York in 2002-2003. Over the past ten years he has exhibited in Europe, the United States and Asia. His work has been acquired by various museums and private collections and has been extensively discussed in the international art press. He lives and works in Brussels.

Author Biography

Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley are both professors at London Metropolitan University. In 1990 they founded the Museum of Installation in London, of which they were the directors until 2005. Their joint work includes the influential publications Installation art (1993) and Installation art in the New Millennium: Empire of the Senses (2003).