Peter Rogiers
(Antwerp,
1967 )
Peter Rogiers, along with Berlinde De Bruyckere and Gert Verhoeven, belongs to a generation of sculptors who revived the sculptural tradition in Flanders in the 1990s. Although his practice is individual and idiosyncratic, Rogiers, through his dynamic, space-defining work, unquestionably adds his name to the history of great figurative sculpture. With humour and self-mockery he subverts the mimetic capacity of stereotypical figures. They are twisted, distorted and expressively charged or accentuated with strange or invented elements. Rogiers casts roughly sculpted works in bronze, but also uses contemporary materials like polyurethane, depending on the form. He incorporates baroque and modernist influences as well as references to comics and B-movies. He also draws inspiration from contemporary dance, in particular choreographies of William Forsythe and Pina Bausch. Rogiers’s sculptures are characterised by a dynamic three-dimensionality and a play with gravity
