Artists
SEBASTIAAN BREMER
Sebastiaan Bremer (b. Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1970) attended the open studio program in Vrije Academie in The Hague (1989-1991). Bremer moved to New York in 1992, where he lives and works now.
Selected shows include Tate Modern (London), The Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York), Het Gemeentemuseum (The Hague), The Aldrich Museum (Connecticut), Marlborough Gallery (New York), Mia Sunberg Gallery (Stockholm), Projektraum I (Berlin), Warhol Museum (Pittsburg). Bremer's work is represented in important private and public collections such as Victoria & Albert Museum (London), MoMA (New York), LACMA (Los Angeles), Berger collection (Zurich), The Rabobank Collection (The Netherlands).
Throughout his career Bremer has in one way or another worked with photographs. In his early years he meticulously reproduced personal snap-shots in painting, developing his idea of memory and its processing. This is what guides Bremer through 're-thinking' a photograph, giving it a new meaning or enhancing the one which it already has. The peculiarity of Bremer's approach is that he doesn't just 'paint' over a photograph, but rather covers it with an intricate web of stokes and dots that adds to it a new dimension and shifts the viewer's perception. In his current work he employs a technique of applying paint onto a pre-existent print or photograph.
The dream-like aspect that the photographs receive through Bremer's re-touching allows the viewers to establish an intimate connection with the works despite them being, in the first place, Bremer's personal snap-shots. His memories become dreams for the viewer: real for the artist and imaginary for the audience.
In 1998 he went to Skowhegan, and in 2001 to Art Omi. He was a visiting professor at VCU in 2006, and was resident artist at the Lower East Side Printshop in 2006/2007.