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The way he writes his name - herman de vries - tells a lot about his way of working and thinking. De vries avoids using capital letters: he believes there is no hierarchy between things.
De vries (Alkmaar, 1931) became involved in the 1960s with the Dutch Zero movement, akin to the international avant-garde group ZERO, in which seriality, neutrality and repetition are important core ideals. In 1975, he began to focus more and more on the processes and phenomena of nature. In Steigerwald, the forest around his hometown Eschenau in Germany, a rotting tree stump can be studied by the freeze for days until it has the perfect shape. He then adds this 'sculpture', as a ready-made, to his collection. De vries also gives back: he places blocks of sandstone in the forest, engraving them with texts such as 'veritas existentiae' - the truth of what is.
Order and arrangement are important principles in de vries's oeuvre. Titles like infinity in finity, no thing and to be all ways to be play with sound, unity and diversity. In particular, to be all ways to be, the title with which de vries is representing the Netherlands at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, alludes to the idea that these six words can also appear in a different order.
Here the philosophy of de vries's practice reveals itself: ordering what is and thus wanting to draw attention to both the unity and diversity of what is around us. Hence the direct way de vries displays his work - framed found objects ranging from bits of glass to rabbit droppings and from rocks to different types of earth. His aim is to focus and show the poetry of things within things.
De vries trained as a biologist and naturalist at the Rijkstuinbouwschool in Hoorn (1949-1951) and worked as a botanist for the Plant Protection Service in Wageningen (1952-1956). Exhibitions of his work were shown at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam and the Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo). Work by de vries is in museum collections all over the world.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
De vries (Alkmaar, 1931) became involved in the 1960s with the Dutch Zero movement, akin to the international avant-garde group ZERO, in which seriality, neutrality and repetition are important core ideals. In 1975, he began to focus more and more on the processes and phenomena of nature. In Steigerwald, the forest around his hometown Eschenau in Germany, a rotting tree stump can be studied by the freeze for days until it has the perfect shape. He then adds this 'sculpture', as a ready-made, to his collection. De vries also gives back: he places blocks of sandstone in the forest, engraving them with texts such as 'veritas existentiae' - the truth of what is.
Order and arrangement are important principles in de vries's oeuvre. Titles like infinity in finity, no thing and to be all ways to be play with sound, unity and diversity. In particular, to be all ways to be, the title with which de vries is representing the Netherlands at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, alludes to the idea that these six words can also appear in a different order.
Here the philosophy of de vries's practice reveals itself: ordering what is and thus wanting to draw attention to both the unity and diversity of what is around us. Hence the direct way de vries displays his work - framed found objects ranging from bits of glass to rabbit droppings and from rocks to different types of earth. His aim is to focus and show the poetry of things within things.
De vries trained as a biologist and naturalist at the Rijkstuinbouwschool in Hoorn (1949-1951) and worked as a botanist for the Plant Protection Service in Wageningen (1952-1956). Exhibitions of his work were shown at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam and the Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo). Work by de vries is in museum collections all over the world.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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