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Ruud Kuijer exhibition

Pay a visit to the Gerard-Marcks-Haus in Bremen this summer. From July 25 to October 25 you can visit the big retrospective exhibition Bildhauerei! Was sonst? by Ruud Kuijer. 

Ruud Kuijer (1959) creates abstract works that playfully rethink the rules and traditions of sculpture (standing, lying, leaning) and his art is concerned with mass and volume, physical presence and materiality, gravity and the relation to the ground. Kuijer composes his sculptures from a wide variety of materials. Each of the parts has its visual significance. Since the 2000s, he has been experimenting more and more with found objects from everyday life, with affluent waste such as discarded plastic shampoo bottles or yogurt packaging from the supermarket. He cuts it into pieces, connects it to something else and then pours it into concrete. The sculptures that are created in this way are indeed made in one piece, but show how relaxed they are put together.

The Gerhard-Marcks-Haus in Germany presents 35 sculptures - some of them man-sized - the first retrospective exhibition with works from all creative phases of thirty years of sculpture.


The title of the exhibition Was sonst? (what else?) is also the motto for the museum's 50th anniversary in September. More about the museum.

 

On sculpture


The exhibition is based on the publication On Sculpture. Ruud Kuijer has been writing about sculpture for thirty years. In 2019 'On Sculpture' was published in three languages. In this accessible collection of texts on sculpture, the sculptor approaches his profession from a different perspective, but always with the same goal: to get to the core of what sculpture is. Kuijer is interested in the traditions of sculpture, but above all has a constant desire to transcend its boundaries and create new combinations.

The pieces are about physicality and abstraction, mass and volume, gravity and the relation to the floor. They are written without further ado and therefore very readable and accessible, while at the same time offering a glimpse of the fundamentals of the profession. Kuijer wrote these texts to gain insight, 'to understand and interpret what was happening under my hands.' With this small collection, the reader now also receives these insights in a clear and legible way.

Yet the publication is not only about his own work, it is also about the sculpture of others and about the specificity of the sculpture in general.

The booklet is available in the museum shop, in your local bookstore and via our website.