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Peter ROGIERS - Ectoplasmic
Press release
Galerie Richard, Paris is pleased to present Peter Rogiers’ first solo exhibition in France from October 24 through December 21, 2013. Peter Rogiers (b.1967) is a Belgian sculptor living near Leuven. The exhibited sculptures portray his exuberant creativity that thrives on his taste for taking risks. They are characterized by an overwhelming spatial impact as well as an inherent dynamism achieved through antagonisms between lightness and heavy classical statuary. The unexpected assemblages firmly root the works in art history albeit with irreverence.
The first creative idea is simply to make a good sculpture, I mean the elementary idea of what a sculpture can be: shapes, lights, balance, relationship with base, etc. That’s when I choose my subject, for example a palm tree, a bird, or a figure. The subject itself is not of significant interest to me. I always improvise and change while I’m in the process of making the work. I change the sculptures by instinct, let it rest, and then think it over to balance between rationality and intuition. Often I leave some imperfection in them, because I also think you can ‘kill’ the work if you try to refine it too much. (Peter Rogiers)
Inspired by Brancusi and Serra, B-movies, comics, fairy tales and rock ‘n’ roll, he combines high art and low culture to render a contemporary perception of our present time through the medium of sculpture. The new sculptures presented for the first time in Paris revisit and update masculine and animalistic statuary. The viewer is astonished before the work because of the dichotomy of the familiarity with the subject and his unexpected way to render it. The aluminum is drilled, broken, burst, and imploded, rendering the sculpture abstract at the first glance. The elements of life-like forms appear depending on the viewing angle. His new sculptures of human busts suggest vestiges of civilizations ripped and reduced to nothing. However there is no narration in Rogiers work and each sculpture is autonomous. The fishes appear fluid and viscous in all movements, while the bird seems to be a mutant biological and mechanical mutant. By spending more time and turning around them the viewer gets into the complexity of each work and therefore considers the mastery by the artist. Rogiers succeeds by taking risks and challenging control in sculpture. He also experiences limits by driving his motorcycles in the European Championship circuit.
Galerie Richard organized Peter Rogiers first solo exhibition in New York in 2012, reviewed in Art in America, The Wall Street Journal, World Sculpture News. Peter Rogiers regularly exhibit at Tim Van Laere Gallery in Antwerp and Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin. His works are in the collection of MuHKA in Antwerp, SMAK in Ghent and were exhibited at Middelheim Open Air Museum, at the Caixa Foundation in Barcelona, at Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, at Magasin in Grenoble.