Lily & Rudy is an exhibition by Danny Devos aka DDV, inspired by the letters of the 16-year-old French girl Lily to her 23-year-old German lover Rudy.

Danny Devos came in possession in 2012 of a number of letters of the 16- year-old French girl Lily from Valence to her 23-year-old German lover Rudy from Berlin, between 2 September 1949 and 27 May 1953. Lily and Rudy got to know each other in Valence in 1948. On 21 October 1948 at 22.30hrs Rudy left from the train station in Valence back to Berlin....

Only the letters of Lily came into possession of DDV. Her intense love letters inspired him to the making of this exhibition. Passionate desire, waiting and hoping, anguishing and suffering, ....

Just like the first solo exhibition by DDV in the gallery (A Study for the Happiest Man Alive - 2012), the Lily & Rudy exhibition consists of one construction which occupies the whole surface of the ground floor of the gallery: a slow-moving construction portraying various aspects of the state of mind of Lily & Rudy. Upon entering the gallery, already a wall with protruding spikes forces spectators to participate in the exhibition in a decisive and compelling way. The visitor will only be able to pass with difficulty or must wait until they can enter the gallery space or turn back. In the construction, some interpretations of the life and state of mind of Lily are evoked in small installations, and there are also several new mechanical sculptures integrated. Hereby, the performance aspect of DDV's work is made comprehensible for the individual visitor in an exhibition context.

The work Lily & Rudy can be seen as a continuation of the work Hit the Deck, Robin. I'll Get Us out of this. b/w but it was Scary for a While, Wasn't it? (De Haperende Mens in Arte et Amicitiae, Amsterdam - 2014) where a slow-moving wall – on one side covered with protruding spikes and a planting of grass on the other side – compelled the viewer to choose, or if necessary to wait until the entrance was released to go into or leave the exhibition room.

The connection with DDV's exhibition Picnic at Hanssenspark (an impressive solo-presentation in De Bond in Brugge - 2014) is also not far away. For Picnic at Hanssenspark the 450 m2 space was transformed into a 're- make/re-model' of the Hanssenspark in Vilvoorde (birthplace of DDV) with many different types of plants, bulbs and grasses. DDV's mechanical sculptures and mash-ups were integrated into the overall concept of the exhibition.

On the first floor of the gallery DDV shows the result of a one-year project at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp: Friday on Your Mind. For a whole year DDV invited all Masters students from all disciplines of the School every Friday to create work inspired by his Birth(+)Fact(X)Death(-)Calendar. The BFD Calendar is a project that DDV has been working on daily since 1985, and often a common thread through various artistic projects of all kind. These range from one-off interventions, exhibitions, presentations to performances or concerts with Club Moral, the legendary noise band with Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven. Friday on Your Mind will be shown once as an installation and was to follow for a year on fridayonyourmind.blogspot.com. The project will also be available as a limited book edition.

In 2012 Danny Devos published the book PERFORMAN-DDV – 160 PERFORMANCES by himself. It is a basic work in the artist's œuvre and a unique document in the history of Belgian art of the past 30 years. For this exhibition DDV creates a sculpture with remnants of the edition.

Danny Devos is a Belgian artist building a consistent body of work since the end of the 70s in which the boundaries of body art, performance, sculpture, installations, web projects, photography and industrial music are challenged. The approach is always a process of careful, long-term and in-depth archival and research work. The result is always a unique and amazing experience for the viewer/visitor.