Iris Bodemer

Iris Bodemer’s work is concerned with what she sees and experiences, what touches her. Conspicuously absent from discussions­ about her work, she prefers her audience to weave their own narratives around what they see and feel. Working intuitively, Iris creates pieces of visual poetry – the perfect distillation of colour, form and material. She is motivated by the possibilities of expression afforded by the juxtaposition of diverse and unexpected materials. Where her early work spoke with a quiet but colourful whisper of gold, gemstones and vibrant found materials, her later series call out with a visceral roar in a darkly wild and windblown landscape of metal, stone and rare earths.

Born in Paderborn in Germany in 1970, Iris studied at Hochschule Pforzheim and the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Since 2014, she has taught at the Berufskolleg für Design, Schmuck und Gerät in Pforzheim. She has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Marzee Prize in 2001 and the Herbert Hofmann Prize in 2014. Iris’ work can be seen in numerous public collections, including the Marzee Collection, CODA Apeldoorn, Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, the Françoise van den Bosch Foundation Collection at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Rotasa Trust Collection in California and the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in China.