Little Heralds Amendments

Title: Little Heralds Amendments
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2025
Materials: Brass pulver, Patina, Resin core, Customized 1/6 knight with aluminum armor, heart balloon.
Dimensions: 35 x 45 x 30 cm
About: This art installation consists of a unique set of components that can be collected, installed, and played with.
Where: Blue Velvet, Zürich

STAMP ALERT – Connecting The Dots

Title: STAMP ALERT – Connecting The Dots
Year: 2025
Artist: Anne de Vries

Description:
An immersive installation exploring themes of media and constructed realities through a combination of animatronics, video, and large-scale printed visuals.

Installation Components:

  • Video:
    • Duration: 22 minutes
    • Format: 4K with sound
    • Description: A fictional news channel titled STAMP ALERT, streamed on an LCD screen and presented by Anya Demure.
      The video blends fact and fiction, creating a commentary on media narratives.
    • Contributors: Mansur Suri (main actor), Leonardo Reuvenkamp (3D animator)
  • Banner PVC & Stretched Canvas:
  • Animatronics:
    • Dimensions: 89 cm × 55 cm
      Materials: Resin, airbrush acrylic paint, lacquer, Raspberry Pi, Python, Sound (22 minutes).
    • Description: An animatronic robot named Vapula watches the STAMP ALERT news channel and provides commentary, adding an additional layer of context and narrative to the installation.

Produced in collaboration with: ODYSSEY, Köln, and Blue Velvet, Zürich

Fragments from: ‘To Romanticize with Indecision’

Documentation from the group exhibition ‘To Romanticize with Indecision’
Curated by Monia Ben Hamouda & Michele Gabriele.
With artworks by Monia Ben Hamouda, Andrew Birk, Anne de Vries, Michele Gabriele, Dorota Gawed̨ a and Eglė KulbokaiteBradford Kessler. At Cassina Projects, Milan, 2024

TRAUMA UNCLOGGED

Title: TRAUMA UNCLOGGED
Year: 2023
Artist: Anne de Vries

Dimensions: Variable
Materials: 14 fully functioning toilets on a dance floor with a light and sound system

Description: This immersive installation features 14 fully functioning toilets on a dance floor, equipped with lights and a sound system. Serving as a stage, it hosted several performers, musicians, and the club night CLUB UNCLOG throughout a one-month exhibition period.
This first incarnation has been hosted and produced by Trauma in Berlin.

Event Program:
April 29th: Opening Night: Evita Manji (live) AMNESIA SCANNER (DJset) SCHIRIN (DJset)
May 4th: TRAUMA UNCLOGGED: PRICE (live performance)
May 11th: TRAUMA UNCLOGGED: Jan Vorisek (live) SADAF (live)
May 20th: CLUB UNCLOG: 7777 の天使, Dmitra, Dasychira, Jasmine Infiniti, DJ Mantis.

Stomping Grounds

Title: STOMPING GROUNDS
Artist: Anne de Vries (in collaboration)
Curators: Adriano Rosselli, Odessa Evelyn Malke
Researcher: Sven von Thülen (der Klang der Familie)
Sand Carvers: Bouke Atema, Jeroen Advocaat
Sound Designers: Rowan Ben Jackson, Odysseas Constantinous
4D Sound Programming: Usomo
Location: Kraftwerk Berlin
About: The art installation Stomping Grounds is a 1:1 replica made from sand of the giant gold vault underneath the Jewish-owned Wertheim building, which after a turbulent history and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 became the cradle of techno music from Detroit, Chicago, the UK, and Germany, known as Tresor.

Trails Rising

Photo by Andrea Rossetti

Title: Trails Rising
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2011
Dimensions: Variable, from 223 cm up to 12 meters high
Materials: Plastic, sand, metal

About:
The sculpted totem poles Trails Rising are composed of sand mixed with epoxy clay, marked by the tread patterns of various sneakers. These imprints—shaped by ergonomic footwear designed to enhance bodily performance—form a record of movement that merges into collective patterns across a mutable surface. The work evokes a sense of shared motion, as if solitary runners converge in a symbolic and physical ascent.
Referencing Constantin Brancusi’s Infinite Column—a WWI memorial in Târgu Jiu symbolizing ascension—the installation reinterprets monumentality through a layered, process-driven lens, challenging essentialist ideas of transcendence and enhancement.

Exhibition views from:
Sandy Brown, Berlin
Éric Hussenot, Paris
Fluxia, Milano
The Composing Rooms, London

Read also:
UNIQUE, UNIQUE-ER, UNIQUE-EST by Agatha Wara

GILLETTE, IDEAL CITY PROPOSAL


Title: GILLETTE’S, IDEAL CITY PROPOSAL
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2014
Dimensions: Various
Materials: Double-sided UV prints on Photo Forex, PVC, mirror, coated metal hanging system, screws, Gillette razors, clothing.

Conceptual Background:
This body of work draws inspiration from The Dream of King Camp Gillette and his radical proposal for a future urban society. Before becoming known for inventing the safety razor and establishing a major industrial enterprise, King Camp Gillette (1855–1932) authored several books and pamphlets outlining his vision for a transformed economic and social system.

In his first major tract, The Human Drift, Gillette proposed the creation of a single, highly organized, technologically advanced megacity called “Metropolis.” Designed to house the entire population—excluding agricultural and rural labor—this urban complex would be constructed using cutting-edge materials and systems. Gillette envisioned this society as being administered by “The United Company,” a unified organization responsible for producing, manufacturing, and distributing all necessities of life.

Although often grouped with utopian literature such as Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, Gillette’s proposal reads not just as speculative fiction, but as a sincere (if eccentric) urban and social engineering plan. As both an inventor and idealist, Gillette’s “Metropolis” functions as a kind of verbal prototype—an industrial-era working model of a unified and optimized future city.

Artistic Approach:
Through precision photographs of Gillette’s shaving products, used as the basis for sculptural forms and visual layering, this work explores the intersections of utopian architecture and the refined industrial design of Gillette’s iconic shaving systems.



Places to see

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Title: Places to See
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2013
Dimensions: 260 × 65 × 160 cm
Materials: Stainless steel, digital monochrome print on milled plexiglass
Edition: Unique

Copyright: Anne de Vries

Login, for two

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Title: Login, for two
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2013
Dimensions: 260 × 65 × 160 cm
Materials: Stainless steel, digital monochrome print on polished and milled plexiglass

Viewfinder

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Title: Viewfinder
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2013
Dimensions: 45 × 65 × 175 cm
Materials: Stainless steel, digital monochrome print on plexiglass, key, medical rubber tubes, colored solution.

Air Gap Hold On

Title: Air Gap Hold On
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2012
Dimensions: 117 × 60 × 8 cm
Materials: Stainless steel, digital print on towel, digital print on plastic

About:
The title refers to the concept of an air gap in both plumbing and networking contexts. In plumbing, an air gap is the unobstructed vertical space between a water outlet and the flood level of a fixture, preventing contaminated water from flowing back into the potable water system. In networking, an air gap is a security measure isolating secure computer networks physically from insecure ones, such as the public internet, to prevent unauthorized data flow. This work reflects on these ideas of separation, protection, and control.

Katanga Bub

Title: Katanga Bub
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2011
Dimensions: 35.43 × 56.69 inches
Materials: Mobile devices mounted on a lightbox displaying a press image of the Katanga mines in the Congo, rephotographed underwater

About:
Katanga Bub brings together the extreme ends of the mobile device industry. It is based on a press image depicting the landscape and workers of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo—an area mined for minerals like tungsten and coltan, essential for mobile device production. The press image has been rephotographed underwater and presented within a freestanding display unit. As water ripples and bubbles distort the scene beneath, the screens of numerous mobile devices display clearer details of the same Katanga mine view. This fusion of the earthy origins of mining and the liquefied luxury of global technology commodities explores the relationship between material extraction and digital information. The work highlights the dual narrative: while mobile devices help disseminate knowledge and raise global awareness with the promise of a better world, the rare earth economy also supports problematic social and political infrastructures in Congo. It reveals the recursive links between matter and information, tracing the path from raw material to data generation.

Exhibition views from: Trails Rising at Sandy Brown Gallery, Berlin; The Composing Rooms, London; and Treijac Project, France.

The (s)Oil we Eat

Title: at Aral GmbH
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2014
Dimensions: 241 x 112 x 51 cm
Materials: Earth from Naturpark Hoher Fläming, Aral BlueTronic SAE 10W-40, Sonax Xtreme antifrost&klarsicht konzentrat Nano Pro, Ignite Vitamin water, Acrylic pipes, Rubber corks, Stainless steel, Paint.

Title: at Capbreton Beach
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2014
Dimensions: 278 x 190 x 31 cm
Materials: Vinaigre aux herbes, Huile d’olive, Acrylic pipes, Rubber corks, Stainless steel, Paint, Beach sand, Styrofoam.

Title: at Holiday Inn
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rtist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2014
Dimensions:  318 x 100 x 31 cm
Materials: Purex Laundry detergent, Comfort Lavender laundry softener, Cola Light, Acrylic pipes, Rubber corks, Stainless steel, Paint.

Title: at Strani Venice
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2014
Dimensions: 225 x 120 x 35 cm
Materials: Aperol Spritz, Chianti, Piatti Detergenti, Acrylic pipes, Rubber cork, Steal, Paint.

Title:at Téte de Rigaud
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2014
Dimensions: 98 x 58 x 30 cm
Materials: Soil, Styrofioam, Beer lid, Tiny metal stands.

Copyright: Annde Vries

Timetables

Title: Timetables
Artist: Anne de Vries
Year: 2011
Size: Variable
Materials: Wood, metal, ceramic, digital photo prints on tables
About: This piece features photographs taken from the clouds above Amsterdam in 2007.
Exhibition views from: TruEye surView curated by Katja Novitskova at W139 in Amsterdam