Summer Breeze
2020
Peter Rogiers
“Summer Breeze” is a sculpture of a dancing figure. According to Peter Rogiers, the motif of the dancer represents grace and movement, which he also considers important in sculpture.
Details
- Plan number: S22
- Zone: Urban nature
- Title: Summer Breeze
- Creator: Peter Rogiers
- Date: 2020
- Material: aluminium
- Acquisition: loan Collectie Vlaamse Gemeenschap
- Object number: MID.LB.BK.009553
The artist’s process goes through several stages. He reworks, disassembles, reassembles, adds elements … We can also see this in the final result: the work shows clear welds, casting seams, and “implementation accidents.” The legs were only added later. Because of the visibility of the process by which it was made, this work escapes the tradition of dancing figures in sculpture.
The figure and the pedestal are cast in aluminum. The artist chose this cold, industrial material as a contrast to the dancer’s expression.
The genesis of “Summer Breeze” can be seen in the visible processing of the metal. This part of the park is also the result of human intervention: the urban wilderness looks natural, but if you look closely, you can see the traces of skillful nature management.
Peter Rogiers occupies a unique place within Belgian contemporary sculpture. He seeks both the future and the past of sculpture. The artist combines a rather classical craft with knowledge of contemporary visual culture and idiosyncratic handling of tradition.
From the same artist
Peter Rogiers
According to Peter Rogiers, the palm tree is so stereotypical that it belongs to everyone and no one. For the artist, the sculpture “has to become more than a typical palm tree; there has to be something strange about it, something that makes it almost an alien entity.” The use of aluminum and sharp forms gives the sculpture a completely different connotation.
Peter Rogiers
Two bright blue figures balance on a pedestal. The title “Two Reclining Figures on a Calder Base (sculpture for Middelheim),” betrays Peter Rogiers’s love of art history. Reclining figures in Western artistic tradition usually refer to reclining female nudes, but in Rogiers’s work they become strange, stretched figures that seem to be dancing or fighting with each other. For the striking colors and shapes, the artist finds inspiration in comics. The title also refers to artist Alexander Calder’s mobiles, which inspired the plinth.
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