Sister
2022
polished stainless steel
length 250 cm
edition of 3 plus 1 AP
(installed on grass, Hanover Square, London, W1S)
Breuer-Weil’s Sister is on public display in Hanover Square, London until the end of October 2023, as part of Westminster City of Sculpture and in collaboration with E & R Cyzer Gallery. The sculpture is a highlight of the Art in Mayfair Sculpture Trail 2023, in partnership with bondstreet.co.uk and the Royal Academy of Arts.
Sister, is an innovative new sculpture that redefines the medium of polished stainless steel by cutting figural forms through the surface, creating a dazzling interaction of shapes combining abstract and figural elements. From a distance the sculpture is in the shape of an egg, representing the origin of biological life and a potent symbol of growth, regeneration and education, inspired by the artist’s sister, a teacher. Up close it becomes clear that the form of a woman encompasses the entire egg, like Breuer-Weil’s public sculpture of the same medium Soul where a person and the globe become one. Looking inside the shapes of the woman, hands, face, hair and other features create many reflected tableaus, exploring ideas of figurative representation. The work matches the oval form of the newly restored Hanover Square.
The artist comments: “It is the ultimate image of potential, of growth, of the future, of new beginnings, but also the idea of sculpture at its most pure and evocative, a seed of new art to come as I experiment with new media, but using the subject of the egg that has been present in my paintings since my student days at Saint Martins School of Art. I have intended the work to be both very simple and very complex. Many polished steel works are only about the outer shape and external reflections. But by cutting into it, cracking it open, I have found it is possible to generate an incredible complexity of imagery that can warrant spending a great deal of time studying the sculpture interactively. I have cut out the image of a woman. It is a deliberate antithesis in form, texture, gender and medium to my series of sculptures of Brothers that have been exhibited widely. Viewers can trace the forms as they interact with the sky and background architecture. The cut out forms reflect one another and bounce back and forth, also mimicking the workings of the creative mind making connections and associations, with literally hundreds of differing angles and details that can be seen and captured in photographs. I have experimented with cutting out polished steel and many other surfaces: for many years I have drawn on polystyrene cups, spheres, and other shapes, including eggs, but in this steel piece I have transformed these more throwaway pieces into something more permanent. It allows me to combine drawing with sculpture, as I have cut a human figure into the curved surfaces of the steel. This allows for innovative sculptural forms as the inner forms can be seen on the outside and vice versa. It is the first step in a new evolution. But I also make reference to other images in the history of sculpture, two connecting hands are a very masculine image from the Renaissance, but here they are the hands of a maternal figure that literally envelops the viewer. “
