Since 1992, Bernardine de Neeve Exhibition has been celebrating new developments in contemporary glass among Belgian and Dutch artists. Taking place once every three years, the seventh iteration of this competition has been narrowed down to three 2015 finalisits who are exhibiting their nominated works at DordtYart, an industrial shipyard turned contemporary art center. The finalist will be annnounced on June 28th.
The three selected artists, Katrin Maurer, Sylvie Vandenhoucke and Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen, are showing pieces that conceptualize science, in works constructed with innovative techniques. This year’s exhibition coincides what would have been de Neeve’s 100th birthday. Bernardine de Neeve (1915 - 1996), was the first main conservator of glass art at the museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and is credited as the co-founder of the Friends of Modern Glass Society, now one of the prominent glass art organizations in the Netherlands. The competiton includes a prize of 5,000 euros awarded in recognition of creativity in design and technique in glass art.
Sylvie Vandenhoucke's Pause, Record Play I, II, III questions perception. It is a blank black canvas with tiny visible, molecules of glass in even rows across the board. The viewer needs to change positions, stand at different distances, to see the experience she crafted. Moving back and forth, the optical experience is to see the shine disappear and reappear, going back and forth from black to white.
“My work emerges from systematic and repetitive set up strategies,” Vandenhoucke said in an email exchange with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet. She was drawn to elements of “duration and flux,” qualities that can play with light. Her current piece she made in an effort to express the experience of "quiet," and to fit into the vast industrial space of the former shipyard.
Katrin Maurer's work, by comparison, is also inspired by scientific repetition, but that of shapes in DNA structures and any other patterns in molecular forms. Her focus is on the copy of building blocks, with particular interest in bubbles and ball-shaped objects. Simulacrum, her proposal piece, is a cluster of clear spherical glass, relating to how identical representations play out in organic constructions. "I want to approach the possibilities of repetition by assembling small graphic elements into a larger whole," Maurer stated in her formal proposal.
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Jan van den Dobbelsteen, an interdisciplinary Dutch artist who also teaches at Academy St. Joost in Breda, has been exploring sound and space in his work, which is rooted in painting as well as audio projects. He has aimed to represent elements like flowers, machines, architecture and color in his music, and his glass practice produces flat mosaic layouts in bright hues.
IF YOU GO:
Bernardine de Neeve Exhibition
Katrin Maurer, Sylvie Vandenhoucke, Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen
April 25th - July 25th
DordtYart
Maasstraat 11
3313 CR Dordrecht
Netherlands
Website: dordtyart.nl/
E-Mail: info@dordtyart.nl
Tel: +31 78 632 1200
Hours:
Wednesday - Sunday: 10am - 6pm