Indholdsfortegnelse for #100 i Ceramics: Art and Perception

EXPERIENCE IS KINETIC. UNDERSTANDING EXPERIENCE is static. This creates a paradox. By the time we digest and understand reality, it no longer exists. An example of this might occur in a crowded public space, such as a train station. In the crowd, you glance and see a beautiful person. In the moment it took your eyes to snag that image and register it as attractive, the person melds back into the crowd. In a sense, we are always playing catch-up. The process of making objects out of clay layers moments of freezing the fluid. Arguably the most essential skill for an artist working directly with clay is balancing stiffness and fluidity. Indian artist Ashwini Bhat brilliantly achieves this balance with her woodfired ceramics. Each element of her work – its…

BARELY RECOGNISABLE, INORGANIC, SLIPCAST ELECTRICAL conduits emerge from carefully constructed porcelain tableaus. These post-industrial, tumorous growths of detritus branch from simple, planar ceramic canvases, with digitally altered images splayed across the mostly smooth, paper-like surfaces. There is a palpable voyeuristic feeling, as though the viewer is peering in on someone else’s nostalgia – someone else’s memories – throughout all of the tableaus. A slice of musty, blue-and-white checkered linoleum floor, possibly from an old apartment, appears in some of the pieces; other pieces display what might be glowing, rusted razor wires that could have once fortified an abandoned lot. Through a labour-intensive creative practice, Copenhagen-based artist Darien Arikoski-Johnson creates painstakingly rendered and thoughtfully constructed porcelain sculptures. Through these exquisitely austere, predominantly flat surfaces, coupled with complex imagery, Arikoski-Johnson explores the…

SITTING UNWASHED, MUTE ATOP ONE OF HIS STUDIO tables across the room, amidst what looks like an archaeology dig of fallen parts, are a pair of small tablets. As if beckoned, I reach for them. They feel heavy; from another place. I am soon to discover that there could not have been a more telling introduction to Adil Writer’s machinations with clay. He tells me that these are “just test books”. Not made as finished pieces but rather as ways for him to observe one clay interacting with another, these open books are the perfect artefact of Writer’s journey – bodiless wings carrying the dust of their origins. “The things we make have one supreme quality – they live longer than we do. We perish, they survive; we have one…

AS EVIDENCED BY THE POPULARITY TODAY OF NUMEROUS meditative or spiritual pathways, there is universal longing for a peaceful state of mind, a place to get in touch with one’s inner wisdom. The hope is to achieve a perspective where small matters drop off, clearing the way for a feeling of inner calm. A powerful incentive for such introspection is often a quiet place of beauty such as a shrine, reflecting pool, nature walk, ceremonial gate, temple, or memorial. Historically, war memorials were realistic depictions, designed to laud individual, highranking military leaders or to commemorate specific battles. They were frequently ornate and executed in bronze, marble or stone. Such works were often more about the sculptor and his skill than about the subject. Architect Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam…

“…it is time to throw ‘if only’s into the sea, like a rock it is time to move away from all fears, all unnecessary feelings. . . . . . it is time to throw the rock to the deepest, towards the bottom, and to turn back and depart for the belonging peace. . .” ~ Leman Kalay SOMETIMES A MELODY, A SMELL, A TASTE OR AN OBJECT takes you from where you are and takes you to a time far away, to a completely different place. No one can say you are there at that moment. You are, for a couple of minutes, in a completely different place, in a completely different time. A smile appears on your face, or sadness. What kind of a time travel is this,…

IN THE SPOKEN WORD PERFORMANCE, 100 STATEMENTS ABOUT Myself, 1992/2013, at Southern Exposure Gallery in the Mission District of San Francisco, California, US Jim Melchert calmly stood before a restless urban crowd restating 50 phrases written two decades ago followed by 50 contemporary statements. His vocal cadence and intonations infused the cavernous room with warmth, humour and surprise. As one might expect, his comments touched upon observations on art and living a creative life. But others such as, “Most people could use some good news,” from 2013, hinted at a humanitarian perspective gained over the course of time. This performance was part of the exhibition, The Long Conversation, featuring select multigenerational artists from throughout the San Francisco Bay Area who were exhibiting, performing and creating conceptual work. It was also…

ON APPROACHING THE STUDIO OF REGINA HEINZ IN South London, England you are faced by a large complex of industrial buildings, a typical London business park, comprising studios and small businesses. This mix of pure arts and business activities is a metaphor for the different worlds she works in today. Originally Heinz trained as a painter in Austria, a discipline that has never left her and, indeed, still influences her work to this day. She brings a level of observation and experimentation to all her work. Early in her career, after moving to London in 1989, she discovered and fell in love with ceramics, developing a unique style of three-dimensional cushion-like surfaces, onto which she could then paint. Working with clay allows Heinz to pursue her continuing fascination with the…

THE SMALL, MOUNTAINOUS VILLAGE OF WATSUKA LIES barely 50 km south of Kyoto, the cultural capital of Japan. Folded into steep, rolling hills of fine green tea and forests of beech, oak and maple, the village traces its heritage back almost 1000 years. On 21 July, 1986 the district had been battered for days by torrential rain, the result of the mid-summer typhoon season of central Japan. Already a number of houses were threatened by flooding and, as in small towns and villages the world over, everyone was pitching in to help. Satoru Hoshino was no exception, setting off in the early morning rain to lend a helping hand. He left his two sons warm and dry at home. His wife, Kayoko, was supervising the final stages of firing of…

GAIL NICHOLS’ HANDS SPEND A GREATER PART OF each day in clay: working and wedging the clay and throwing dynamic forms that rise sharply from a sturdy foot. She starts by making her own clay from a mixture of clay dug from her own land and commercially available materials. She completed a Certificate in Ceramics at the St George College of TAFE in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia in 1985 and won her first award in ceramics that year – first place in the student wheelthrown section – and has gone on to win awards in the US, Korea and Australia. The quiet, contemplative nature of Nichols’ pots belies their power. They are soft and organic and do not appear to have been touched by a human hand. The forms…

THE TEXTS ACCOMPANYING ESTER BECK’S PREVIOUS exhibition, UN–RUHE, devote significant detail to the various aspects of the relationship between the artist’s action and the final object1. A renewed examination of her work allows us to reflect on these strategies through different readings. Over the years, Beck’s body of work has revolved around itself, around the potter’s wheel, around the body, the body’s actions and the body’s material. Hence, the obvious context seems to be Action Art2, meaning gestures, movements and actions that leave a colourful and structural mark on the material. These actions, which form the foundation for a relationship between the body and the material, also embody the basis for a reconsideration of the origin of Beck’s work: pottery. Beck now continues the trend she began in recent years,…

IN HIS BOOK, THE PAINTER’S SECRET GEOMETRY, CHARLES Bouleau reveals a geometry that can be applied to almost any painting from Giotto to Rothko. One of his most telling observations is that few masterworks adhere 100 percent to their compositional armature. There is always some element, a feather in a Rembrandt hat, the head of a martyr in a Caravaggio or the arms in a David history painting that is slightly off. How we read images drives this dynamic. Having a structure is important because looking is not a single stare. A conglomeration of juts and darts of eye movements comprise how we look at the world. Through our experience and natural instincts, we construct expectations. When looking at an image or object, we want the important stuff to be…

CLAUDI CASANOVAS, JAUME PLENSA AND MIGUEL Barcelo all hail from the post-war post-Franco generation of Catalan artists, and stand out in the field of contemporary art. The three of them have succeeded in their aim of moving out from under the sway of the previous generation of Catalans – Picasso, Miro, Artigas – by imposing their respective imprints not only on the natural properties of the materials they use, but also in the specific memory of origins and heterogeneous time frames. These three artists also share a concern with the practice of writing (actual writing as well as manifestos and interviews) in an essential relation to the process of the work and the path of experimentation they have chosen as regards the materials used as well as the concepts put…

THROWING, TRIMMING AND TRIPOD ARE THE KEY methods when creating ceramic vessels either teapots or espresso cups in Heikki Rahikainen’s way. Rahikainen is an old school Finnish ceramics artist who still has a tone of honour in his voice when he speaks about Kyllikki Salmenhaara (1915–1981), his teacher and the grand old dame in Finnish ceramics. From the beginning of his career and the first exhibition at 1983 Rahikainen has been showing unique teapots – even his first invitation card was a flattened ceramic one. He is known for his teapots and he is fascinated by the idea of everyday objects and their function as carrying memories. From his childhood he remembers a Tapio Wirkkala (1915– 1985) glass object that was kept in a bookshelf and how it reflected the…

CONSIDERING THE ARTWORKS PRESENTED IN THIS exhibition as a culmination of years of thinking, making and research, there is a multiplicity of recurring themes that create this cohesive and successful body of work by Po-Ching Fang, professor and mid career Taiwanese ceramics artist. The body of work is robust with materiality and conceptual strength. Both demonstrate elements that the artist manipulates with skill and grace to bring about strategic visual communication of his carefully considered ideas. The work is complex; it is not ‘about’ one idea or another. Instead it reflects a persistent thread, and the artist manipulates that thread, much in the way a musician develops a theme. From it spins off variations, harmonies and refrains. First of all, Fang gives us the cup. It is his primary statement,…

REGRETTABLY THE BROCHURE THE MUSEUM PRINTED out for the exhibition gave the wrong titles to the pieces. It used the descriptive captions intended for the placement of the work, instead of the actual titles of each piece. This resulted in the author of the “Apex” review (Ceramics: Art and Perception, March, 2015) to base his criticism on those descriptions rather than the actual titles. I just wanted to set the record straight. The busts are simply named: African Child with Albinism 1,2,3,4 and African Teen with Albinism. There is an additional piece that is of significant importance to the entire installation, which is called Africa. She is a 10 foot long reclining nude. Also the photos used for the museum brochure and recent article were working photos since I had…

ON THE 11TH NOVEMBER1 2014 THE LAST OF 888,246 ceramic poppies was ‘planted’ in the dry moat of Britain’s ancient Tower of London, England, UK. The temporary installation marked the centenary of the start of World War 1 with each poppy representing a British or colonial fatality. Blood Swept Land and Seas of Red was conceived by Derby based artist Paul Cummings inspired by a line of poetry from an unknown soldier found in a local archive. It attracted more than five million visitors before it was dismantled with every poppy sold and the proceeds distributed to charity. For a craft trained ceramist it represented huge manufacturing and logistical challenges but once the installation began he encountered the conceptual difficulties that are inherent in all artworks designed as memory sites…