Sebastiaan Bremer

Sebastiaan Bremer - To Joy is a detailed exploration of the influences, source material and groundbreaking technique of the US-based Dutch artist. The book is an illustrated guide - part-intelligentsia, part-phantasmagoria, part-secret journal - through the labyrinthine imagination of this contemporary arist. Sebastiaan Bremer's work has a connection to photography, utilising a unique style of drawing directly onto photographs that he has honed over the years. The artworks explode with energy as his obsessively-painted white dots rise over his photographic canvases like clouds of smoke. Bremer creates his subjects from a swirling ring of psychedelic/art historical/personal anecdotal ecstasy. Sex, death, family, art, history, love and lust come in and out of focus as the imagery morphs into layers of alchemy and meaning. Charlotte Cotton, esteemed independent writer and curator, introduces the book with an essay outlining the importance of Bremer's contribution to contemporary photography. Supplemented with Bremer's own personal writings - like an intimate studio visit of his artistic practice - and an essay by Gregory Volk, an art critic for Art in America and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, this visual book reads and flows like an autobiographic novel.