Herman de Vries per l'Olanda

La Fondazione Mondrian ha annunciato che Herman de Vries  è stato scelto per rappresentare l'Olanda alla Biennale di Venezia del prossimo anno, con la curatela di Colin Huizing e Cees de Boer.

L'artista presenterà un particolare progetto sulle "isole deserte e incolte della laguna veneta", secondo un comunicato stampa della Fondazione Mondrian. "De Vries considera la natura essere il modello di realtà ultima e il suo obiettivo è quello di dimostrare la sua qualità immanente-poetica". 

Press release

herman de vries to be all ways to be Dutch entry to the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale

Curators: Colin Huizing and Cees de Boer

Commissioner: Mondriaan Fund

9 May - 22 November 2015

Mondriaan Fund has announced that the presentation ‘to be all ways to be’ by visual artist herman de vries (1931) and curators Colin Huizing (1965) and Cees de Boer (1955) will be the Dutch entry for the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale, which is to take place in 2015. Mondriaan Fund is following the advice of a jury, which selected the herman de vries and Huizing and De Boer duo’s plan from five proposals.

They selected the presentation developed by herman de vries, Colin Huizing and Cees de Boer because of the artist’s quality and oeuvre and the relevance of the proposal. The Rietveld Pavilion will be filled with three-dimensional installations, including new work to be produced by de vries on deserted and overgrown islands in the Venetian Lagoon. de vries considers nature to be the ultimate reality model and his goal is to demonstrate its immanent-poetical quality.

The jury was fascinated by de vries’ engagement and is of the opinion that, in all its austerity and terseness, it will be a powerful, believable, intimate and topical presentation within the biennale spectacle. de vries himself considers this to be a unique opportunity to make his statement on a prominent international platform.

The relationship between man, culture and nature is increasingly becoming a subject of (artistic) research within the visual arts - a theme on which de vries has been working for decades. For more than 60 years now he has been developing a highly versatile oeuvre in which art, science and philosophy are confronted with the world’s, and especially nature's reality. The theme of his work is topical in an age in which ecological issues can count on an ever broadening attention from the general public.

Autumn 2014 the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will host the retrospective exhibition ‘herman de vries. all' (curator: Colin Huizing, advisor: Cees de Boer) in combination with the exhibition 'herman de vries. no thing' at the Schiedam Ketelfactory. Works by herman de vries are also included in this year's 'ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s-60s' at the Guggenheim Museum in New York; in 2015 this exhibition will travel to the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

The jury members were Hester Alberdingk Thijm (Director, AkzoNobel Art Foundation), Saskia Bos (Dean, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art), Aernout Mik (visual artist) and Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen (Curator, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam). The Chair is Birgit Donker, Director of Mondriaan Fund.