June, 2015
Looking closer, HOW BIG CAN WE GROW
The installation “HOW BIG CAN WE GROW” is in fact a soap bubble machine: gigantic bubbles float gracefully in slow motion above a film of water. They keep coming in a fixed rhythm , they melt, they grow and break again.
Imaginative installations like this one and also performances on location, have become the trademark of visual artist Peter Schräder (Utrecht, The Netherlands) in the past 15 years. In his artwork he uses technology to create poetry. His latest project is a machine that produces bubbles: HOW BIG CAN WE GROW.
Peter Schräder works as a travelling artist. On his travels through Europe, Central-America and Asia, he has always sought co-operation with local artists, cultural institutions or museums. He feels that working together with others, gives exploring the limits of possibilities for making art at any specific location, its real value. Every new work of art gets its final shape through a very close connection with the city, the people and the country. And in doing so, often reflects on the problems and injustices that are part of many people’ s everyday lives.
Most often Peter Schräder creates new artwork on location, but this time he brings his unique bubble machine along with him. He speaks of his installations as ‘realistic poetry’. In this case not words, but the ingredients of which the installation is composed, create rhythm and metre and meaning. In his own words : “To use realistic poetry is a way of being aware.”
“HOW BIG CAN WE GROW” is part of his “GLOBO BANK-project” . This project calls the attention to the possibility of another world economy based on the fair distribution of money. The project started in Nepal, where Peter called in the help of local fishermen. These men who actually live and work in one of the poorest countries in the world, participated in constructing the symbol of the globo (designed by Schräder as an alternative global monetary unit) with their colourful boats in the middle of the lake of Pokhara.
Starting point for making his art is according to Schräder the simple notion that a way of being aware is to look closer, and that is precisely the invitation of the bubble machine.
The artist wishes to bring his ‘realistic poetry’ close to the audience. Closer still, because he wants the audience to be part of the installations, to interact with them. Or simply to take time to watch and to get into the rhythm of the machine. Which is almost a trance like experience, like sitting at the campfire and staring into it.
Come and see it