This book is a visual and geographical journey through the artist's work and exhibitions, enriched by five original samples—olive leaves, charcoal, street paper, earth and seaweed—inserted and activated by hand according to the artist's recommendations.
In 2024 and 2025, the Espace de l'Art Concret, the Dourven Gallery, the Aline Vidal Gallery, and the Gassendi Museum presented the work of Herman de Vries, reflecting their long-standing relationships with the artist.
Through a selection of exhibition views, documents of in-situ interventions and photographs of the artist in his studios and places of work, this book operates as a succession of visual and geographical wanderings, between exterior and interior, between context and detail, between the world and the work.
Five samples (olive leaves, charcoal, paper in the street, earth, seaweed) were taken in the five locations concerned, following the artist's recommendations and included in this publication.
Herman de Vries (born 1931 in Alkmaar, The Netherlands, lives and works in Eschenau, Germany) is a Dutch visual artist whose work explores the interconnection between art and the living world. Having started out as an Art Informel painter in the 1950s, his interests shifted in the ensuing years, and in the 1970s, he became focused on found objects from nature and their artistic-philosophical qualities and implications. He has made paintings, collages, texts, sculptures, installations, a.o., and has dealt with plants, earth, and other parts of nature from botanical, medical, historical, as well as psychedelic viewpoints.
Edited by Elsa Briand, Sandra Cattini, Fabienne Grasser-Fulchéri, Nadine Gomez-Passamar, Syndicat, Aline Vidal.
Contributions by Nadine Gomez-Passamar et Anne Mœglin-Delcroix.
Photographs by Jean-Baptiste Warluzel, François Fernandez, Marion Reibner, Jean Brasille.
