Poetry captured in images – this is an apt description of Sigefride Bruna Hautman’s work. She has been making sculptures, reliefs, installations, videos, drawings, collages and textual work since the 1980s. Her oeuvre is distinctly figurative and moves between hyperrealism and stylization, between legibility and symbolism, simplicity and complex layering. Â
Sigefride Bruna Hautman
Bruna Hautman (b.1955) lives and works in Antwerp. She has exhibited her work in diverse museums and institutions, including Mu.ZEE (Ostend), M HKA (Antwerp), De Vereniging voor het Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst (Ghent), Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Deurle), Extra City (Antwerp), Campo Santo (Ghent), Melly (Formerly known as Witte de With, Rotterdam), Casa Frollo (Venice), Villa Borghese (Rome) and Skironio Museum Polychronoopulos (Athens).
Her work is held in several private and public collections, including the Flemish Community Collection.
Hautman often creates interrelated series. Themes such as social outrage, existential questions and family or interpersonal relationships run like a connecting thread through her practice. She draws inspiration from art, music and literature, citing influences as diverse as Giotto, Oskar Schlemmer, Samuel Beckett and David Bowie.
This is the first survey exhibition of her rich oeuvre. To coincide, M Leuven is also producing a new book on her work.
From 25 January to 11 May, M HKA presents the archive exhibition 'Today’s Place'. Hautman was one of the artists who contributed to shaping this radical, multidisciplinary space in Antwerp. The presentation at M HKA highlights the dynamic exchange between artists such as Narcisse Tordoir, Jan Janssen, and Rudolf Verbesselt, as well as performers and designers like Walter Van Beirendonck, who came together in their quest for new forms of expression.
