BROTHERS conceived in 2015 bronze height: 600 cm (19’ 8”)
edition of 3 + 1 Artist’s Proof in bronze resin inscribed ‘Breuer-Weil’ and “Brothers / 2016”
Exhibited:
Marble Arch, London, May - November 2016
David Breuer-Weil at Christie’s, A Private Sales Exhibition, an exhibition of monumental sculpture across London, June - July 2017
St Pancras New Church, London, 2017 - 2019
Brothers installed at Marble Arch, London, 2016
“This sculpture is a human arch, but the arch means something very potent: the joining of two minds. It is about connections such as brothers, siblings, partners, friends and joining strangers. It is an image of coming together, resolution and peace. But it also offers therefore a suggestion of symbolic meanings to every bridge or arch. Every arch is a symbol of connection and resolution. For me Stonehenge is the ultimate sculpture and it has always infuenced my sculptural work since I made a small copy of it as a student. Part of Stonehenge is a similar image of an arch, of two interconnected forms, with the connection the lintel. For me this lintel is a thought, a shared mind. “I have personally textured the entire surface with thousands of marks and inscriptions, effectively painting in plaster. Included in this diorama of marks, words and ideas I wrote the names of multiple pairings of brothers throughout time, from the most archetypal Cain and Abel to modern brothers including my own and those of many others. You pass under the arch and see this graffti, but it is not graffti accrued over time by vandals, but part of the sculpture and its theme. I have deliberately allowed the spontaneous quirks in the maquette to come through to the full sized version without attempting to correct them. Part of the visual appeal will be that it appears to be both tiny and massive simultaneously as my maquette was only a few inches tall. “
“A few generations ago the idea of phoning somebody thousands of miles away would have seemed like a preposterous fantasy, but now we take that, email and social media for granted. Distances between people that were formerly unbridgeable are now connected in less than a second. I want to express that miraculous element of modernity.
The two fgures are brothers, partners. But they also suggest the idea that each person has two aspects: good and evil. I believe that every person has the capacity for both elements. According to the Talmud, Adam, the frst man, was double sided,
he had two fgures back to back, because he was created with two inclinations, a good inclination and an evil inclination. This idea has undoubtedly been an infuence.
My brothers are communicating in a very physical and intimate way. I want the viewer to view the arch from underneath, to look upwards at this moment of communication because such a connection is a form of prayer, an expression of a hope that we can be understood by ourselves or another person; the image is a physical embodiment of the joining of minds.”
