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W&P | AT MUSEUMS
BOUKE DE VRIES | WAR & PIECES
Exhibiting Internationally | 2012 – Present
War & Pieces is Bouke de Vries’ contemporary interpretation of the decorative sculptures that adorned 17th- and 18th-century banqueting tables.
War & Pieces is currently traveling North America in its extensive tour, landing at its sixth US location in 2022. The installation has been exhibited at venues in Europe and Asia, beginning in 2012 at the Holburne Museum in Bath, England with support from the Arts Council of Great Britain. At each venue, de Vries works with the curators and the collection by responding to the region and its history and interacting with the interior settings. In some venues, he was able to add to the installation using relevant objects from the collection, as at Charlottenburg Palace, which was looted in the Seven Years’ War and almost completely destroyed in the Second World War, adding a special meaning to this era-spanning work.
WAR & PIECES
ON VIEW
This spring, the Lightner Museum’s grand ballroom gallery will be transformed by a dramatic ceramic centerpiece created from thousands of fragments of white porcelain.
War & Pieces is an eight-meter (26-foot) installation by Dutch-born artist Bouke de Vries inspired by the sophisticated figural centerpieces that decorated eighteenth-century European rulers’ banqueting tables. Displayed during the dessert course on special occasions, these figures first made of sugar and later increasingly porcelain, told stories or conveyed political messages to the diners.
Bouke de Vries draws on such traditions in his modern centerpiece, arranged around the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion whose force appears to have turned the entire table into a wasteland. Battle rages across this heap of shards old and new, fought by myriad miniature figures with conventional arms. Jesus on the cross and the Chinese Buddhist goddess of compassion, Guanyin, watch over the death and destruction.
WAR & PIECES | ON VIEW
At The Lightner Museum
Born in Utrecht, The Netherlands, Bouke de Vries studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven and Central St Martin’s, London. After working with John Galliano, Stephen Jones, and Zandra Rhodes, he switched careers and studied ceramics conservation and restoration at West Dean College. He has been a full-time studio artist based in London since 2010.
Bouke de Vries, “War & Pieces”, detail
EUROPEAN LOCATIONS
Berrington Hall | UK | 2017
Gemeente Museum | Netherlands | 2015–6
Castle d’Ursel | Belgium | 2015
Chateau de Nyon | Switzerland | 2014–5
Yingge Ceramics Museum | Taiwan | 2014
Charlottenburg Palace | Germany | 2013
Whitespace | Netherlands | 2013
Alnwick Castle | UK | 2013
Charlottenburg Palace | Germany | 2013
PRESS & PUBLICATIONS
EXHIBITION CATALOG
WAR & PIECES
PAST PROGRAMMING
WAR & PIECES
PAST PROGRAMMING
WAR & PIECES
PAST PROGRAMMING
WAR & PIECES
PAST PROGRAMMING
WAR & PIECES
PAST PROGRAMMING
• Public Programs at The Wadsworth Atheneum
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