About Pim Wever

Pim Wever – Visual Artist — Sculpture · Ceramics · Bronze · Autonomous Works & Monumental Commissions

"The moment he, as a young shooter, met the questioning gaze of a dying bird was the moment his love for art was ignited. As an artist and designer with broad interests, he remains deeply fascinated by nature—both its wild, untamed essence and the cultivated world—along with the tension that exists between the two.

Growing up in the polder, surrounded by the vast freedom of West Friesland, nature inevitably became his greatest source of inspiration.

A freethinker with a broad perspective, he is a man of imagination, contemplation, and action.

 

Commisioned works

Pim Wever (1966) lives and works in the Netherlands. After his initial study of structural engineering, he graduated from the Royal Academy of Art & Design in 's-Hertogenbosch in 1994. He discovered his passion for sculpture while studying at the academy in  's-Hertogenbosch. The combination of his engineering and art studies dovetails perfectly with his current activities. All this has resulted in a diversity of works, often made on  commission. His designs range from pieces of jewellery to fountain sculptures several metres high and he is experienced in the utilization and implementation of state-of-the-art techniques.

 

Pim still experiences it as something very special whenever someone asks him to make a sculpture. In his words: "It's something like a meeting of kindred spirits. The people who commission a sculpture are people with an open attitude and a broad perspective, people who have higher aspirations. In order to arrive at a good design it is very important for me to feel the client's engagement in the process. Without that, the object I make will never really 'come to life'. My line of approach is to be of service. My ultimate goal is always to create a sculpture in which the client recognizes beauty and which exceeds their expectations. For me, making exeptional and thoughtful objects and thereby stirring the human spirit in a positive way, is a matter of survival, it's what keeps me standing, in the midst of everything that's occurring on this earth."

 

Artist statement

My work begins with a struggle with matter. Not as a metaphor — literally. I push, pull, twist, press inward. The hand leaves traces; the material pushes back. What emerges is not a composition but a condensation of actions: deep imprints of fingers, cavities and protrusions, torn edges with their milky-white fracture surfaces. This is not style but a record. The surface registers what has happened.

I am the maker who surrenders to the moment. A moment of doubt can bring me to fall onto the object — and whatever adheres, remains. I work on a sculpture, immersed in the process, and let myself drop into the object with my knees. The work is finished. What is traditionally removed as error — wood, dust, the imprint of the floor — becomes constitutive here. Chance is not corrected but adopted. These are not sculptures that have taken form; they are events that have solidified, and are still palpable.

Beneath that struggle with matter lies a tension that runs throughout my entire practice: that between wild nature and cultivation. Cultivation has brought us an extraordinary amount — but also a downside. Under its influence, a numbing occurs: a gradual loss of the natural sharpness that once served as a tool for survival. The ability to truly see, to hear, to recognize danger. I call this loss “the unseeing.” It is not an accusation but a condition — a condition we all share, and one that manifests in my work in multiple ways.

A ceramic head, solid and friendly in appearance — but with one thick, protruding eye. The man stands there calmly. Tough. And yet that one eye, swollen shut, unmistakably present. A bronze skull with hollow eye sockets into which light falls from above — empty yet gleaming, dead yet alive. Fifteen rows of overturned bucket seats in perfect order — the steel legs pointing helplessly backward in rhythm. The upward-facing backrests form a rhythm of scales, like a longing for protection. But unmistakably fallen. Three tall columns of stacked chairs, permanently on the verge of collapse, the fixation invisible and remaining so. All speak of submission, of “the unseeing,” of a loss that presents itself with a certain lightness — because that is how one carries it.

In the installation The Fly — concept by Pim Wever, sound composition by Danny de Vlugt — the point of departure is the buzzing of a single blowfly: the sound we most reflexively dismiss. Electronically processed until it evokes something akin to Gregorian chant. Carcasses and detached wings, moved by wind, projected onto suspended white pillows that promise rest yet themselves float. The most banal becomes liturgical. The insignificant becomes sacred. The tools of modeling wax — Ten Steps towards Advanced Groupthinking — stand as witnesses to a psychological climate: a step-by-step plan for self-improvement that proves unusable in real application. They reveal the desire to gain control over the uncontrollable.

My large public commissions — sculptures up to thirteen meters, open call winners, realizations for international clients — are the external arena in which the studio is tested at scale. The autonomous work feeds the commissions; the commissions put the autonomous work to the test. In both, I seek the same: the point at which a form appears both made and found, where the familiar becomes strange, and the strange suddenly becomes comprehensible. That is, ultimately, the funny struggle of life.

 

PROFILE

Pim Wever (1964) is a visual artist with a wide-ranging, cross-material practice that moves between intimate autonomous work, spatial installations, and large-scale sculptures in public space. His work explores the tension between the natural and the cultivated — a theme that appears at every scale, from a 25 cm ceramic object to a thirteen-meter monument, and from a bronze head to a sound and video installation centered on the life of a single blowfly. The idea determines the material: ceramics, bronze, steel, video, sound, found objects, modeling wax.

His autonomous practice and commissioned work directly inform one another.

EXHIBITIONS & INSTITUTIONAL PRESENTATIONS

2026 Exhibition, Artrium — Open art space, Den Bosch
2026 Design commission presentation, Design Museum Den Bosch — Institut Néerlandais, Paris

Commission: Design Museum Den Bosch · Exhibition presentation design for the museum at the Institut Néerlandais, Paris, France

2024 SCAF — Sibiu Contemporary Art Festival “Crossing Borders” Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania

By invitation, funded by the museum · Curator: Dr. Ana Maria Negoita (University of Bucharest) · Conservator: Alexandra Runcan

Duration: 6 works, 1 month

2024 Group exhibition “Behind the Façade III” — three independent installations
Vught, The Netherlands · 15 artists · Curator: Pim Wever · Participant with approx. 15 works

Exhibition supported by the Mondriaan Fund

Installation “The Fly” · sound / video / spatial arrangement

Sound composition: concept by Pim Wever, developed by composer Danny de Vlugt. Beginning as a recognizable buzzing, electronically processed and evolving into a composition evoking Gregorian chant. Video of fly carcasses and detached wings moved by wind, projected onto suspended white pillows. The pillows — symbols of rest — do not lie still; they hang, they float.

Installation “OMG 1” · found bucket seats · spatial arrangement

A large continuous row of overturned bucket seats, backs facing upward, grey and glossy. The backrests read as fish scales — organic, almost natural. From a distance: fallen soldiers, dominoes. The legs point helplessly backward. Order in the fall. About submission, downfall through submission, and “the unseeing”: the loss of natural acuity and the capacity to truly see as a result of cultivation.

Installation “OMG 2” · three stacked chair columns · steel / plastic

Three tall columns of stacked terrace chairs, each leaning far forward and permanently on the verge of collapse. The fixation — steel cables and bolts in the floor — remains completely invisible; the threat persists, never resolves. Some visitors walked around them. The stacks are simultaneously dangerous masses and autonomous beings of steel and grey plastic. About submission, downfall through submission, and “the unseeing”: the visitor who does not pause embodies the theme.

2023 Group exhibition “Behind the Façade II”
Den Bosch, The Netherlands · 10 artists · approx. 40 works by Pim Wever · Participant

SELECTED PUBLIC & INSTITUTIONAL COMMISSIONS

2025 Design commission exhibition The Surface Decoration Ball, Design Museum Den Bosch

2025 Design commission exhibition Designprijs Brabant, Design Museum Den Bosch

2021–22 Sculpture “Tribute” — stainless steel / LED · 9+ m × 6.5 m
Den Bosch · Client: Built to Build

2020 Sculpture “Orthen Gate” — stainless steel / LED · 13 m × 3.3 m
Den Bosch · Client: Built to Build Sculpture design · h. 13 m — not realized
Commission cancelled due to sale of the building · Design available

2019 Sculpture “Kas van Das” — competition winner Brood en Spelen
By invitation: MTD Landscape Architects

2018 Top 3 national competition “Energy Landscape of the Future” · Dutch national government
Jury including Chief Government Architect Floris van Alkemade · Chair: former minister Sybilla Dekker
Jury statement: “almost philosophical” — exceptional attention to the landscape

2018 Bronze sculpture with stainless steel · length 3 m
Private commission · Noordwijk

2017 Bronze sculpture, headquarters Phenom World / Fisher Scientific
0.9 × 0.6 × 2.0 m · silicon bronze · Eindhoven

2016 Sculpture, outdoor exhibition Hermitage Amsterdam
stainless steel / epoxy · h. 2.0 m · Amsterdam

2016 Sculpture “Marianne Vos” — Open Call winner
CorTEN steel · total length approx. 18 m, horseshoe-shaped curve
diam. 7.5 m / h. 2.7 m · Meeuwen
Client: Province of North Brabant / Cultural Council

2015 Sculpture “The Stilled Landscape and the Cormorant” — Open Call winner
CorTEN + stainless steel · 6 × 6 × 6 m
Wijk en Aalburg · Client: Province of North Brabant / Municipality / Council for Culture

2013–14 Series of 8 sculptures with light architecture
stainless steel / natural stone · 0.5 m – 6+ m
Mazirot, France · Client: Graines Baumaux Nancy

2010–12 Series of 3 large-scale sculptures with water features and light architecture
stainless steel · 2.5 m – 4.75 m
Warmenhuizen · Client: Bejo Zaden International / Seed Valley NL

2010 War memorial “Lotus” Dutch East Indies
stainless steel / natural stone · 2.5 × 2.5 × 1.4 m
Wageningen

2008 Reliquary shrine, bronze nimbus and stand with flames
brass / bronze / silver · 2.5 × 1.5 m / Jesuits, Krijtberg, Amsterdam

 

Photo left: Pim Wever at the foundry