From April 14 until April 17, Hales Gallery will present new works by Sebastaan Bremer at Dallas Art Fair.
From April 14 until April 17, Hales Gallery will present new works by Sebastaan Bremer at Dallas Art Fair.
In his early years, Bremer meticulously reproduced personal snap-shots in painting, developing his idea of memory and its processing; in his current work he employs a technique of applying paint and ink onto a pre-existing photograph or print, adding new dimensions and shifting the viewer’s perception of the work. This process of ‘re-thinking’ a visual document from the past is central to Bremer’s new series of re-worked vintage lithographic flower prints.
As with the family photographs from which Bremer has previously worked, these lithographs bear several layers of personal history for the Dutch-born artist. They come from a 1948 book called “BLOEMEN” (Flowers), consisting of colour images of famous flowers from Holland, which was presented to the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina on its publication; the printed book and the flowers within it were both symbols of national pride.
Bremer took his first edition copy of the book with him on his first trip to New York in 1992, but over the years it was lost. When he recently rediscovered it, he described it as like receiving a present from a past self. Bremer’s surface applications of paint and ink breathe new life into these perfectly composed, meticulously painted and coloured flowers, shaking the flowers loose from the realm of the printed page. The carefully chosen colours and shapes of Bremer’s applications also mirror the imagery created by gravitational lenses in space (as seen through a Hubble telescope), which bend and reshape light from a distant source.
Sebastiaan Bremer was born in The Netherlands in 1970, and moved to New York, where he currently lives, in 1992. Largely self-taught, Bremer attended the open studio program at Vrije Academie in The Hague from 1989-1991, and has also studied at Skowhegan (1998) and Art Omi (2001). In 2001 he had his solo debut, ”Veronica,” at Roebling Hall, New York. Bremer’s work is part of several important collections in the US and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Furthermore, Sebastiaan Bremer’s artwork has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and The Aldrich Museum, CT. He also has had solo exhibitions at, among others, Air de Paris and James Fuentes in New York.
For over two decades Hales Gallery, located in London and New York City, has been a focal point for artists, collectors and institutional figures alike and has formed an important environment for the development and distribution of artworks and ideas, all of which has consistently attracted worldwide attention. At the core of the gallery’s principles is the nurturing of emerging talents alongside that of some of the 21st century’s most significant creative figures. Hales Gallery regularly places its artists’ works in the collections of some of the world’s most significant private and public collections and works closely with respected curators and advisors in doing this.
Located at the Fashion Industry Gallery – adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the revitalized downtown Arts District – the 2015 Dallas Art Fair featured 95 prominent national and international art dealers and galleries exhibiting painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, video, and installation by modern and contemporary artists.