herman de vries
to be
Two words. A verb. A beginning.
To be simply means to be. To be there. To be present.
This thought is ever-present in the work of herman de vries. A stone is there. A leaf is there. Earth is there. Water is there. A human being is there. None of them asks to be explained.
herman de vries does not seek to describe the world. He brings it closer. What is found is not necessarily altered; what is already there is given space to be seen. Nature appears not as representation, but as reality — and as something of which we ourselves are a part.
To be also embodies a non-hierarchical way of thinking. Human being, plant, stone, earth and water share the same simple condition: they are there. Not because they are first given meaning, but simply because they are.
From to be, other works also come into focus. Text, found materials, earth, plants, traces and simple actions do not need to explain one another. They can exist alongside each other. It is precisely in the space between them that something becomes visible.
We are accustomed to naming, ordering and assigning meaning. The work of herman de vries asks us to let this go and simply look at what is there.
herman de vries is now 95 years old. Throughout his long artistic career, he has returned again and again to something elemental: being, looking, observing.
herman de vries (Alkmaar, 1931) has spent more than six decades developing a body of work in which art, science and philosophy come together. Trained as a biologist and researcher, he developed a practice rooted in close attention to natural processes, chance and observation. As a member of the Dutch NUL group and the international ZERO movement, he developed in the 1960s an artistic practice in which reality itself became the point of departure.
From the 1970s onwards, earth, plants, stones and other found natural materials became central to his work. In 2015, herman de vries represented the Netherlands at the 56th Venice Biennale with to be all ways to be. His work is held in leading museum collections worldwide. In 2025, he was appointed Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, the Netherlands' highest civilian honour.
Bradwolff & Partner Backs Space
Pieke Bergmans
to become
Becoming. Coming into being.
People speak, materials remain silent. People act, things are made. In the work of Pieke Bergmans, the boundary between the two has never been taken for granted.
From early on in her practice, Bergmans did not begin from the idea that an artist imposes form on matter. On the contrary, she starts from the inherent properties of the material itself. Glass flows, expands and slows. Ice melts. Air moves. Gravity pulls. Matter responds, shifts, resists and gives direction.
In "Solidified Water" (2011), on view at Bradwolff & Partners, this becomes tangible. A tree trunk is split into nine sections, over each of which hot, molten glass bubbles are blown. Bergmans observes and choreographs the process. Without a mould, the glass grows and moves across the wood, sagging, swelling and continuously changing shape. Bergmans follows the process closely, looking for the moment when the glass is on the verge of collapsing or breaking under its own weight. It is precisely at this point that she intervenes, holding time still. A fleeting moment within an ongoing stream of change is solidified.
Bergmans seeks to show the world in her work as it continually unfolds: natural forces at work, forms emerging and changing again. Not as an image of reality, but as reality itself — in the process of becoming. And we are not outside this process. Through what we do, say, make and leave behind, we take part in what the world becomes.
Pieke Bergmans (1978) studied at St. Joost in Breda, Design Academy Eindhoven, ArtEZ in Arnhem and the Royal College of Art in London. In 2007, she established studios in Amsterdam and Milan. Since then, she has presented exhibitions and projects in the Netherlands and internationally, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Vitra Design Museum and 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo.
Her work is held in the collections of museums and art institutions including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Groninger Museum, Centre Pompidou and CNAP in Paris, and MUDAC in Lausanne.