Bouke de Vries : Fractured Images

9 Jun-15 Jul 2017

Overview

Fractured pottery shards are glued together by golden rivulets, molten metal runs across fault-lines like glowing lava streams on a volcanic plain. They become map lines, raised scars, a documentation of past trauma. Where they are not glued back together, objects sit, blown apart, held forever in stasis, neither whole nor shattered, a frozen instant in time in which one single defining moment of violence and pain metamorphoses into a soulful, beautiful future. In the works of London-based Dutch artist Bouke de Vries, destruction leads not to the end, and pain does not mean failure, but, rather, a new beginning. In imperfection lie hope, strength and beauty. Fractured Images (9 June–15 July 2017), marks his first solo show at Kristin Hjellegjerde and features new works and original sculpture focusing on the ceramic history of China, the largest producer of ceramics the world has ever known.