James Fuentes LLC is pleased to announce Triptych, a presentation of a single new ambitious work by Sebastiaan Bremer (born June 27, 1970 in Amsterdam). Bremer’s dynamic images are achieved by utilizing a photographic image as a canvas and meticulously painting and drawing on the surface with ink mediums and acrylic. He creates a web-like effect over the obscured photograph that functions as a filter, portal, or, as Marshall McLuhan would call it, “an extension of a central nervous system”. The resultant composite allows the viewer an equal ability to see both the real and the imagined. Having developed his signature medium for almost ten years now, Triptych, which Bremer started in 2006, is a masterwork in its scale, technique and invented syntax.

In Triptych, art history lattices the artist’s personal history, multiple images interlace. In 2006 Bremer came across a Rembrandt self-portrait in which a play of light on Rembrandt’s hair appeared like energy being conducted outwards from his mind—a representation of the struggle to convey inner thoughts. Subsequently, Bremer set out to re-create that image with modern effect by photographing an extremely inquisitive boy in a manner reminiscent of the Rembrandt self-portrait—this is the foundational image for Triptych. For the painted image on the surface of the portrait, Bremer sought to revise another Rembrandt, The Angel appearing to the Shepherds, imbuing a revelatory event with suspicion rather than the compliance inherent in this iconic religious image.