Sebastiaan Bremer
Sebastiaan Bremer’s artistic career spans across disciplines and media, but he has become particularly renowned for his ability to transform pre-existing images into ornate, dreamlike tableaux through a careful process of enlargement and intricate hand painting that results in completely unique works.
The use of found imagery as a basis to explore ideas about time and memory has long been central to Bremer’s practice, and in the late 1990s he began experimenting with drawing directly onto the surface of photographs. Initially working with snapshots of family members or familiar places, Bremer developed his signature technique of printing the pictures in an enlarged format—well beyond conventional dimensions—and then altering and embellishing the underlying scene with delicate patterns of dots and strokes using India ink and photographic dye, or applying splashes of paint.
Over the past decades, Bremer has used this approach to create a progression of distinct bodies of work, expanding the scope of his source materials from purely personal moments to an array of images that have captured his imagination or held significance in his life. These range from adaptations of Rembrandt etchings to Brassaï’s photographs of Picasso’s studio and Bill Brandt’s series of close-up images of his famous subjects’ eyes, as well as the vintage lithographic flower prints used in Bremer’s Bloemen series.
Whether starting from the work of an iconic artist or revisiting his own family albums, as in his latest series Veronica, 2018, silver gelatin prints he produced from long forgotten negatives of candid shots his father took of his mother in her mid thirties, Bremer’s choice of visual documents is rooted in his biography. Hints of his native Holland permeate his work, from his appreciation of the way light falls across a room reminiscent of a Vermeer interior to the exquisitely painted addition of a pointillist feather or flowers to a contemporary photograph that transports the viewer to the world of Dutch Old Master paintings. In engaging with images of others, he is constantly investigating his own memories and thoughts, weaving a dialogue between the underlying photograph and the marks he uses to transform but never completely obscure it, thus creating a physical representation of the confluence of our inner and outer lives.
Sebastiaan Bremer studied at the Vrije Academie, The Hague and Skowhegan School of Art and Sculpture, Maine. The artist currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been the subject of three major catalogs: Monkey Brain (2003), Avila (2006), and To Joy (2015), and has been exhibited in such venues as the Tate Gallery, London; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; The Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; and the Aldrich Museum, Connecticut. Bremer’s work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
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Sebastiaan BremerDiervilla Eva Rathke, 2016
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Sebastiaan BremerSophie 1, 2022
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Sebastiaan BremerPedro 1, 2022
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Sebastiaan BremerAndrea 1, 2022
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Sebastiaan BremerCrown Burst, 2011
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Sebastiaan BremerCactus Dahlia Victory Day, 2015
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Sebastiaan BremerAve Maria 20, 2017
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Sebastiaan BremerAve Maria 7, 2016
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Sebastiaan BremerAzelia Mollis x Sinenses Christoffel Wren, 2019
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Sebastiaan BremerDarwin Tulip Charles Needham, 2019
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Sebastiaan BremerEgmont 1, 2011
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Sebastiaan BremerEye #11 (After Bill Brandt's "Henry Moore's eye, 1972"), 2012
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Sebastiaan BremerLa Dame Combinée Carrée, 2013
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Sebastiaan BremerLentretien, 2013
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Sebastiaan BremerMuse: Bath, 2012
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Sebastiaan BremerSchoener Goetterfunken XIII B, 'Tearfully Away From This Circle' (Weinend Sich Aus Diesem Bund), 2010
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Sebastiaan BremerSchoener Goetterfunken XVIIIB, ‘Cannibals drink gentleness’ (Trinken Sanftmut Kannibalen), 2010
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Sebastiaan BremerVeronica - Good Morning, 2019
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Sebastiaan BremerVeronica - Peel, 2018
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Sebastiaan BremerVeronica - Seasons, 2018
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Winter Show
29 November 2022 - 6 January 2023 -
Sebastiaan Bremer: New Portraits
6 September - 1 October 2022 -
Sebastiaan Bremer: Nocturne
13 February - 21 March 2020 -
Summer Show: A selection of gallery artists and new acquisitions
10 July - 10 August 2018 -
Sebastiaan Bremer: Ave Maria
3 May - 28 July 2017 -
Summer Show
20 July - 14 August 2015 -
ALTERED: Appropriation & Photography
7 May - 8 August 2014
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Sebastiaan Bremer in USF Contemporary Art Museum Online Exhibition
6 June - 12 December 2020 23 September 2020Looking at Sebastiaan Bremer's pictures is like entering another world, familiar yet strange, where facts and feelings meld like music and lyrics. His work, a...Read more -
Review of "Sebastiaan Bremer: Nocturne"
SEBASTIAAN BREMER IN ARTSPEAK 13 February 2020Nocturne marks the debut of several series of portraiture that Bremer has been developing over the course of the past two years, culminating in the...Read more -
The Best New Yorker Photography of 2019
SEBASTIAAN BREMER IN THE NEW YORKER 15 December 2019Sebastiaan Bremer’s illustration created for the short story “Dandelion,” by Lore Segal is featured in “The Best New Yorker Photography of 2019”.Read more
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Art Basel Miami Beach 2022
Miami Beach Convention Center, Booth A8 1 - 3 December 2022Edwynn Houk Gallery returns to Art Basel Miami Beach 2022, exhibiting vintage and contemporary artwork at Booth A8 from December 1 - 3.Read more -
Paris Photo 2022
Grand Palais Ephémère, Booth C15 10 - 13 November 2022Edwynn Houk Gallery is pleased to return to Paris Photo 2022, exhibiting artworks by Ilse Bing, Brassaï, Erwin Blumenfeld, Imogen Cunningham, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Man Ray, Tina Modotti, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts, Valérie Belin, Sebastiaan Bremer, Christopher Bucklow, Gail Albert Halaban, Mona Kuhn, Vera Lutter, Robert Longo, Sally Mann, Arno Minkkinen, Abelardo Morell, Erwin Olaf, Matthew Pillsbury, and Jessica Wynne.Read more -
The Armory Show 2022
Javits Center, Booth 223 9 - 11 September 2022Edwynn Houk Gallery is pleased to return to The Armory Show at the Javits Center from 9-11 September 2022. Visit us at Booth 223.Read more