2DM Blogazine

A Grand Tour Of My Mind / Bouke De Vries

- Portrait of the artist -

Bouke De Vries, was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and had an illustrious start studying at the Design Academy, Eindhoven and Central Saint Martin’s, London, then working with John Galliano, Stephen Jones and Zandra Rhodes. He subsequently wanted to give a twist to his interests and began studying ceramics conservation and restoration.

- Jesus, bed of nails -

Renowned as London’s leading ceramics conservator, he became one of the most loved within art collection circles once he decided to start making sculptures out of  broken china and porcelain, instead of restoring them. Afterwards, the subject of his art turned definitively from reconstruction to deconstruction.

- Narcotic 2, magic mushrooms -

This passage leads to Vries’ fine aesthetic, involving deep cultural insights and ancient references to beauty, beyond the once-perfect broken figures: his exploded artworks actually testify to the breaking point from which the perfect beauty undergoes a fatal drama.

- Cupid Sebastian -

From the accidental trauma the object thus acquires a new existence, new history and new currency by the artist’s operation on it, which in turn permit this object to be seen in a somewhat cubist way, in its needing to be meaningful all the way to its inner fragments and spaces. The sculptural installations between past and future succesfully blend with modern technology: users with a camera phone can easily experience a virtual exhibition of the works, including getting hyperlinks and artworks informations.

- Grieving Mary -

The first Italian exhibition of Bouke De Vries is curated by Daniela Palazzoli, and if you wish to see these beautiful fine damaged ceramics, they’ll be shown at GLORIAMARIAGallery, Via Watt 32, Milan until April 14th.

By Elisa Lusso – Images courtesy of GLORIAMARIAGallery

Moneyless @ Syntasizer

It’s impressive how figurative art can convey deep insights through only lines, colors and shapes in a plain geometric space.
Over the past few years, Teo Pirisi aka Moneyless has been performing this exact process of removal, obtaining complexity and completeness through simplicity and neatness. Starting with writing and lettering all over the walls, he immediately felt constrained within the two dimensional scale, and subsequently began to use different rough materials such as twine and wool yarns to give his figures a three-dimensional existence. These medias are real constituents of his unrelieved dialectical relationship with geometry. Cloves fix the focal points of the geometrical structures, created to represent things caught in the external physical world, then transposed into shapes conveying intangibile ideas of their reality. All the shapes are reduced, overall, yet still keep a tension that releases a nearly invisible motion. Hidden in the very inner shape, multiple visions and perspectives concealed by the entire structure finally cleverly come to sight, though interpretation by the holistic-eye is never instantaneous.

In Moneyless‘ words: “From my point of view, poverty in the very essence of the shape is a true richness, it represents the silence that permits the thought to emerge.”

If you’re intrigued in knowing more about this geometrical philosophy, Moneyless will be showing his works with paintings and installations from tonight @ Limited No Art Gallery, Via Porpora, 148 – Milan – together with Ryan Spring at Syntasizer.

By Elisa Lusso – sketch by Moneyless