Press Release and
Highress images for download:
Steen Ipsen: Tied-Up
4/12. Black glazed earthenware with red PVC. H 65 x W 33 cm. Photo: Ole Akhøj.
Marianne Nielsen: Chrysanthemum 2013. Stoneware with glaze. H 4, 5 x dia 18 cm. Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen.
Anders Ruhwald: Source #2 / 2015. Glazed
ceramic, steel, lamp components. H 162 x dia 40.5 cm. Courtesy of Volume Gallery, Chicago.
Kristine Tillge Lund: CHINA. Installation view. Left: Snail and Taurus. Photogravuere. Right: China. Various porcelain. Photo: Alf-Georg Dannevig.
Morten Løbner Espersen: #1861. Glutony. Stoneware and glazes. H 40 cm x dia 25 cm. 2015. Photo: Holger Niehaus.
Bente Skjøttgaard: White species no 1602, 2016. Stoneware and glaze. H 32 x L 48 x W 39 cm. Photo: Ole Akhøj.
Martin
Bodilsen Kaldahl: Gallery Format installation image - detail. Work 1: Particles, 21 spheres of
varying size (dia 8 - 28 cm). Glazed and unglazed ceramic. Work 2:
As It Happened - an Oslo Line. Unglazed ceramic. Length 950 cm, 2015. Photo: Markus
Li Stensrud.
The exhibition runs from April 12 to May 14
Press preview will be held on Wednesday 13 April from 15 - 17 at the gallery
www.gallerialanteri.com
Press preview will be held on Wednesday 13 April from 15 - 17 at the gallery
www.gallerialanteri.com
Press Release
During the Milan Design Week
2016 Copenhagen Ceramics - in close collaboration with Galleria Salvatore
Lanteri - is proud to be presenting a show of new works by a group of Denmark’s
foremost ceramic artists. The exhibition aims to highlight current developments
on the contemporary scene of ceramic art and to show how, at the age of the
digital and dematerialization, clay continues to inspire, to reinvent itself,
and pushes artists towards new experimentations.
The boundaries between craft, design and fine art seem increasingly blurred and the works in this exhibition are all in this field of cross-over and interrelationship. You might say that what connects the projects is a special interest in one particular matter - clay. Clay as a historical medium rooted in ancient cultural traditions ...clay as an amorphous material of incomparable formability... fired clay as an exquisite richness of texture and colour. Clay epitomizes materiality and tactility and the recent surge of interest in ceramics as artistic medium reflects a new position: a need for a hands-on approach seen in the light of the digital revolution.
All artists in the show are well established and are showing their work in museums and galleries worldwide on a regular basis. They represent the generations of artists where professional engagement with an international audience has become as important as the home market.
The boundaries between craft, design and fine art seem increasingly blurred and the works in this exhibition are all in this field of cross-over and interrelationship. You might say that what connects the projects is a special interest in one particular matter - clay. Clay as a historical medium rooted in ancient cultural traditions ...clay as an amorphous material of incomparable formability... fired clay as an exquisite richness of texture and colour. Clay epitomizes materiality and tactility and the recent surge of interest in ceramics as artistic medium reflects a new position: a need for a hands-on approach seen in the light of the digital revolution.
All artists in the show are well established and are showing their work in museums and galleries worldwide on a regular basis. They represent the generations of artists where professional engagement with an international audience has become as important as the home market.
So why do we curate a group exhibition of Danish
ceramics only? Can you still speak of particular Danish characteristics,
influenced by tradition and some common background? This exhibition certainly shows
a rich variety of expressions and statements: seven very different approaches
to the art of ceramics.
About the Artists
Anders Ruhwald’s (b.1974) work explores the cultural role of objects
through contextual displacement and interchange of familiar forms, texture and
material qualities. The works are generally presented as large installations,
that comment on and question conventional ideas about what belongs respectively
in the domestic and the public sphere, discussing the very status of the object
in a contemporary setting.
Bente Skjøttgaard (b.1961) makes highly textured ceramic sculptures
with an aura of equal parts toughness and her sense for an underlying poetic
delicacy. She is constantly testing the performing abilities of the raw
materials, the works relying on both her fresh, sketchy approach to modelling
in the wet clay and the unpredictability of her firings with glazes at high
temperatures. Out of her immediate control, the materials are left in the kiln to
perform on the basis of her previous experiences and her infinite curiosity for
new unexpected results. Bente Skjøttgaard keeps adding new highly personal
chapters to the infinite story that culture and nature share, whilst continuing
her exploration of ceramic possibilities.
Kristine Tillge Lund (b.1973) is interested in the cultural historical preconceptions
linked to the production of ceramics. She scrutinizes values inherent in the
various processes of making by enlargening particular, overlooked aspects of
the relationship between the materials’ qualities and behaviour and what
convention dictates for the finished results. What if the glaze becomes the
object itself? What if the roll of porcelain clay is fired unelaborated into
the status of an art object? Or the flawless vase is deliberately set to
produce cracks, thus denying it’s culturally agreed functional qualities?
Marianne Nielsen (b.1971) holds a very special position in Danish
Ceramics. In an almost nerdy way, she is preoccupied with the role of nature in
our culture. In recent years her work often has resulted in definite renderings
of natural subjects: mountains, feathers, leaves and
now
flowers and plants. As a kind of souvenir they refer to something beyond ourselves,
being continuous, universal and something which, through its authenticity,
contains an essential beauty. Yet, the representations of
nature are about ourselves, since they only acquire their meaning through our
particular gaze.
Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl’s (b.1954) ceramic sculptures are emphasizing their
simple expressive existence in space. He insists that even the most casual,
banal gesture in space can be made important through a precise formal
elaboration. In recent works he seeks to establish the conditions for creating
an intuitive, spatial form, setting up his own obstacles to avoid consciously
planning the figures. Like sculptural equivalents of semi-consciously scribbled
doodles, the works just exist as pure three-dimensional movements. A captured
account of the here and now.
Morten Løbner Espersen (b.1965) states: ‘The vessel is my object of
choice. An archetypical form I’ve spent over 20 years making variations on,
from the functional and modest, to the aesthetic and sumptuous. Clay is my
material of choice, because it contains so many possibilities: a plastic,
amorphous material of incomparable formability that can be fired into
imperishable, precise forms’. In particular, Espersens vessels are
characterized by an exquisite richness of texture and colour obtained through
his multi-layered application of glazes.
Steen Ipsen (b.1966) works with a ceramic expression involving both
form and decoration. In the hand-modelled sculptures the decorated patterns
seek to underline the shapes, making them stand out more clearly, thus strongly
emphasizing the movements in the objects. He is especially known for works consisting of joined, simply
coloured spherical elements, that are subsequently tied up with coloured
strings in a connecting line-pattern, resulting in an abstract and highly
spatial, sculptural expression.
Copenhagen
Ceramics is an exhibition platform, that began its activities in 2012, with the
aim of showcasing and demonstrating the high quality and great diversity of
contemporary Danish ceramics as well as work by selected non-Danish artists.
