Jef Geys (1934 - 2018) graduated from the Antwerp art academy and settled in Balen, also in the Kempen, where he worked as an art teacher at a girls' school for more than 30 years. In fact, this was one of Geys' many ways of formulating a critique of society and of art ? a critique that is a fundamental value in his extensive, diverse and complex oeuvre. Geys has been described as an artist caught between a regional and international context, cut off from social reality. That is not necessarily true. In many ways he is a follower of Marcel Duchamp, who championed the strategy of stealth retreat. Geys has chosen to base his work on provincial references. All his exhibitions are accompanied by an issue of his Kempens Informatieblad, which he publishes himself and designs in such a way that it resembles a local, freely distributed newspaper. One of his main strategies is subversion which, as he rightly points out, can only happen 'within the system'. In 1970 Geys was invited to prepare a solo exhibition at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. He replied with a letter to the museum ? and to the Ministry of Culture, Defense and Justice ? proposing to blow up the museum. Nevertheless, the exhibition took place the following year. This is characteristic of his method, which is process-oriented and confrontational: Geys creates situations so full of contradictory potential that they threaten to blow themselves up; by dismantling it, he shows the corrupting powers of current reality all the more convincingly.