Bouke de Vries

UNBROKEN features a selection of highlights from Bouke de Vries’ career, in which he experiments with the theme of decay and repair. This retrospective includes still lifes, relics, and monumental installations: in total, some 95 objects and installations, 11 of which are new works created especially for this exhibition.

Many of the works on view are based on historical objects, yet they also engage with a wide range of contemporary cultural phenomena and elements from the artist’s personal world. Playful references, such as a porcelain sculpture of Marge Simpson as Guan Yin, and other childhood memories appear alongside tributes to the artist’s father and husband, as well as allusions to drug culture and war.
In total, the solo exhibition UNBROKEN features around 95 objects and installations, including new works created especially for this show.

A book entitled Bouke de Vries: Unbroken is published to accompany the exhibition. Edited by Princessehof ceramics curator Wendy Gers, it features a selection of the finest works from the British-Dutch artist’s oeuvre. Internationally renowned art experts such as former Design Museum director Alice Black, head of applied arts at the Rijksmuseum Femke Diercks, director Xa Sturgiss of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and many other prominent figures have contributed essays and entries on Bouke de Vries’ art and works. Former Dutch Design Award winner Sybren Kuiper is responsible for the graphic design of this first and only overview of De Vries’ work.

Order the book online or visit the museumshop.

The exhibition ends grandly with War and Pieces, an eleven-metre-long installation offering a contemporary take on the opulent table centrepieces once favoured by European aristocracy in the 17th and 18th centuries.

At the heart of this chaotic battlefield of shards stands a dramatic and inevitable centrepiece – the ultimate act of war: a nuclear mushroom cloud composed of countless fragments of white porcelain. The cloud is formed from ghostly cherubs, skulls, and decapitated or distorted porcelain dolls – or “Hummels gone wrong,” as De Vries calls them. Christ on the cross and Guan Yin, the Chinese goddess of compassion whose name means “One who hears the world’s cries,” witness the death and destruction; atop the cloud, an angel weeps.

In stark contrast to the whiteness of the porcelain, other figures have mutated into cyborgs, adorned with brightly coloured bionic limbs and heads fashioned from fragments of plastic toys. De Vries refers to these plastic additions as “modern invaders.” He notes: “The ever-increasing ubiquity of non-biodegradable plastic, supposedly indestructible, brings the installation into our own, more toxic age.”

The work has already received significant international acclaim and powerfully captures both the fragility and resilience of ceramics. Since 2012, War and Pieces has toured across Europe, Asia and the United States, with De Vries subtly adapting the installation to each location.

Bouke de Vries, based in London, is renowned for his unique approach to ceramics. He transforms broken and discarded shards into extraordinary artworks that challenge perceptions of beauty and perfection. His background in fashion and textile design, combined with his training as a ceramics restorer, makes his work visually captivating and conceptually stimulating. De Vries’ work is part of many leading international collections and is represented by prominent galleries in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.