Peter Bremers: Inward Journey
Part of the 2014 Summer of Glass II
Made possible in part by the Lincoln Financial Foundation and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass
The prevailing concepts in Bremers’ work are emphasized in this exhibition, and they are best described in his own words: “We see the natural world as something separate from ourselves; exploit its gifts without restraint for economic gain, and by doing so turn it from an age-old friend into a hostile force. We show little trace of gratitude and seem to forget that we are ourselves an intricate part of nature.”
Dutch artist Peter Bremers was born in 1957 in Maastricht, where he studied sculpture at the University of Fine Arts from 1976 to 1980 and three-dimensional design at the Jan van Eyck Academie from 1986 to 1988. Searching for suitable ways of realising his artistic ideas, he at first worked with a wide range of materials, including glass, plastic, steel and stone. In 1989 he attended a course given by Lino Tagliapietra at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, but the strongest impetus to turn to glass as his ideal material had come three years earlier, during a workshop held at the Jan van Eyck Academie by the senior Dutch glass artist A.D. Copier (1901-1991).
Bremers works with a team of assistantswho carry out ideas at the furnace that the artist has acquired on extensive travels in Asia, New Zealand, Africa and the Antarctic. Perhaps Bremers’s most compelling works are the recent Icebergs & Paraphernalia. In a DVD documentation of this series he describes his journey to the Antarctic in a deep-sea sailing ship, recording his impressions of the glaciers and of the waves glistening in the dawn sunlight. He also tells of disastrous attempts to realise the resulting ideas at the furnace, and how he travelled to the Czech village of Pelechov, near Zelezny Brod, to have them cast instead. In Icebergs & Paraphernalia Bremers uses undulating wave-like shapes, along with angular holes and arches to evoke a combination of ice and fire, light and colour. He recreates in glass the openings and fissures in the glaciers, together with the unfathomable depths of the ice.
Tickets to this special exhibition are required. Cost: $5 per person in addition to regular museum admission. Each ticket will permit entry to the Summer of Glass exhibitions 42nd Annual International Studio Glass Invitational Award Winners, and Peter Bremers: Inward Journey. FWMoA members receive free admission and complimentary tickets to all FWMoA shows. Become a member now.