PETER ROGIERS

On Friday, September 5, 2008 Galerie Thomas Schulte is opening an exhibition with new works of the Belgian sculptor Peter Rogiers. This is Rogiers’ first larger solo exhibition in Germany. The opening reception will be held from 7 to 9 pm: the artist will be present.

Alongside his opening at Galerie Thomas Schulte, Rogiers will be showing one further work at “abc art berlin contemporary” in the halls of the Alter Postbahnhof near Gleisdreieck in Berlin Kreuzberg (September 4 to 7, 2008).

The expressive sculptures of Peter Rogiers, vacillating continually between abstraction and figuration, distinguish themselves particularly through their colossal spatial presence. Their precise and perfectly balanced masses have an inherent dynamism that seeks to usurp the surrounding space.

The sources of Rogiers’ creation are the catalogue depictions of classical and modern sculpture along with films and comics as well as his own photos. The Belgian critic Luk Lambrecht writes: “The photos divest the figure of mass and gravity and automatically abridge depth and perspective. He [Rogiers] models his sculptures on the basis of this two-dimensional pictorial information using the most diverse materials and techniques” and creates new spatial configurations that play with the alienation of the found and seek the possibility of a contemporary sculpture.

In this work Rogiers follows the collage principles of fragmentation and recombination – yet while working in not just found material but above all parts of his own sculptures. Once found, motifs can re-emerge again and again in later works. This method expresses the artist’s search for a sculptural technique by which the genesis of one sculpture already produces the germ of the next one. Rogiers hopes to find a self-regenerative process that continually drives itself to bring forth the ideal and complete shape. And yet Rogiers does not believe in any ideal human form: rather, for him the human is “a manipulable and defenceless object” cramped with fear for its self-preservation (Luk Lambrecht). In his idiosyncratic and uniquely expressive pictorial language, bordering on mannerism and balanced between high culture and subculture, Rogiers’ figurative work is also a commentary on the state of humanity in our civilizational present.