Ceramics Now

Hello everyone and welcome to our first Month in Review, a summary of the last month of activity on Ceramics Now. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Twitter to receive the latest news.
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This month’s featured artists (view list):

Elizabeth Shriver (works)
David Gallagher (works)
Francesco Ardini (works)
Ellen Schön (works)

This month’s featured exhibitions:

Ceramics Now Team Exhibition / Europe Gallery, Brasov
Contemporary Ceramics / Stremmel Gallery, Reno, NV
Ellen Schön: Vessel Variations (x3) / Vessels Gallery
Fragile! In Transit / Traveling exhibition around Europe
Scandinavian Design / Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Marek Cecuła: SEEDS / Glass and Ceramics, Wrocław
Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos / NEW MUSEUM, New York
Bharti Kher / Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art
Ruth Duckworth exhibition / Erskine Hall & Coe, London
Contemporary Clay Invitational / j fergeson gallery
Arina Ailincăi: In-Scripted Body / Art on the Avenue
Scandinavian Ceramics Conference 2012 / Hjørring
Clémence van Lunen exhibition / Galerie NeC, Hong Kong
MOUNTED / Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge, Montana
CONCEPTION - Part Two / Canvas Galleries, Belfast
Aneta Regel Deleu / Puls Contemporary Ceramics
Liliana Folta / Amazing Things Art Center, Framingham
Reviving the light: Zsolnay Ceramic Design / ILIAD, NY
Bertozzi & Casoni: Regeneration / All Visual Arts, London

This month’s featured connections:

Daehyun Kim Illustrations
Mimicry Chairs by Japanese design studio Nendo
Martin Creed on My Modern Metropolis
Leslie David - Painting Please!
Tim Hawkinson - Mobius Ship
Robert Montgomery: Echoes of Voices in the High Towers
James Hoff: I’m Already a Has-Been / VI, VII, Oslo
Anna Von Mertens - Portraits

This month’s news on Ceramics Now:

New publishing schedule for print and digital
New magazine shop - 10% Sale ends December 31, 2012
We hit 25000 followers on Tumblr (27600 now)
Published Calendar of Ceramic Art Competitions for 2013

Next month’s news: Ceramics Now Exhibition - 3rd edition

For media partnerships or sponsorship please contact Vasi Hîrdo, Editor, at vasi@ceramicsnow.org
Submissions and general info: office@ceramicsnow.org

Private view: October 12, 7-9 pm.

All Visual Arts are proud to present Regeneration, a unique installation from Italian artists Bertozzi & Casoni. The artists are acclaimed for their delicate depictions of a culture in decay, deftly rendered in fragile ceramic clay. Their latest work Regeneration queries the hierarchy of aesthetics, revealing the beauty in the neglected and discarded ephemera of our seamless culture. The pieces compel the viewer to confront the visceral decay of contemporary society, to expose the cracks between the artifice of the world we are presented with and to explore what lies within these fissures. With this imaginative approach to their practice, Bertozzi and Casoni align the traditional with the experimental, and allow us to construct our own narrative around their evocative scenes.

Bertozzi and Casoni manipulate the indistinction between the real and the simulacrum in their work, an obsession for detail which evokes the Decadent taste for imitation and crafted artifice as superior to the natural. In fabricating these visually and emotionally compelling still-lifes, the artists engage the viewer in deeper themes of impermanence and mortality. Through rendering the abject and overlooked in such exquisite detail, Bertozzi and Casoni signal the return of the repressed, the avoidance of our own mortality. In one piece in which the memento mori is explicitly rendered, an ox skull is dominated by a vivid monitor lizard, symbolic of both death and rebirth in its habitat across Asia and Australia. In the antonymously titled DisGRACE, vibrant blooms sprout from the polluted detritus of a decadent and avaricious society, a scene of nature triumphing over the excesses of hyper-capitalism.

Regeneration contemplates the possibility of change through rebirth, rediscovery and reappropriation, manipulating earth into elegant and fragile structures. In one piece, a cluster of butterflies flock to raise the severed head of a deer from an ornamental platter, recalling the Renaissance representations of John the Baptist or Holofernes. In a similar echo of classical scenes, and dominating the Regeneration is the serene image of a silverback gorilla resting in the Buddhist lotus position on a bed of discarded mattresses. A roe deer lies prone across its body, while wrens and goldcrests commune around the pair. The piece is an evocation of symbolic power, from the visceral confrontation of our Darwinian descendent dying out in front of our eyes, to the shift between the viewer and sculpture, object and subject as we find ourselves caught in the compassionate gaze of the animals. Our own mortality is inscribed in the tableaux where urban structures, religion and the animal world collide to reveal the grace in disgrace which Bertozzi and Casoni seek to capture.

It seems appropriate that the duo push their material to its limits and question the possibility of representation in their work at every turn. Their liberal accumulation and compilation of cultural references is evident in the playful amalgamation of objects in a work where a swordfish’s head juts from a guitar case; the shapes tessellating the natural with the cultural. Their curiosity and playful approach to objects creates a process of continual experimentation and discovery, freeing themselves from convention and the stereotypes of the ornamental and domestic associated with the ceramic medium, and producing unexpected moments of pathos and humour through their synthesis of past and present, nature and artifice. The artists subvert the established rules about the perception of applied arts through inverting the symbolic power of their traditional medium, exceeding the inherent conservativism of ceramics to sculpt fantastic and grotesque scenes that liberate both the artist and viewer’s imagination.

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Ellen Schön’s profile on Ceramics Now Magazine - View her works

“I have always been interested in the ability of a ceramic vessel to point to something beyond itself—to function as metaphor. Ceramic vessels, physically structured with necks, shoulders, bellies, and feet, can evoke the gesture and anthropomorphized stance of the human body; they also reveal deep aspects of human experience and of the natural world.

My fervent interest in clay vessels has led me to explore new territories in form and surface. Recent work explores three variations on the ceramic vessel form:

The ceramic vessel as a Wellspring or Womb, with possibilities of both fecundity and barrenness;
The vessel as Bottle, whose forms evoke the elongated posture of Cycladic idols and the scarified texture of Yoruba terracotta heads;
The Planet Series explores swirling colored surfaces on rounded orbs, suggesting planets and depths of earthly strata.

These series represent different but related expressive interests. Each piece in a series is part of a continually evolving solution to a set of questions or parameters I have chosen to work within. The parameters, themselves, may change as the series evolve.

Through spontaneous handling of inanimate clay, I attempt to find and breathe life into form. My creative process is grounded in reflective practice—imposing ideas on and listening to the material in cycles of learning. The material directs me as I direct it. We are in a reciprocal relationship.” Ellen Schon

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Opening reception: Wednesday, October 17, from 6 - 8 pm

Works by Eva Zeisel, Julia Kunin, Zsuzsa Füzesi, Viktor Erdei, Sándor Dobány, Edina Andrási.
Curators: Julia Kunin and Andrea Megyes

Balassi Institute New York and ILIAD are proud to present the exhibition Reviving the Light: New Zsolnay Eosin Ceramics, featuring contemporary designs by a select group of Hungarian and American artists prepared at the Zsolnay porcelain factory in Pécs, Hungary. The exhibition opens on October 17, 2012 at ILIAD and will be on view until November 30. The Zsolnay Porcelain Manufacturing Company, founded in the 1850’s, has been known to produce the finest in Hungarian ceramics, particularly during its “golden age” in the Art Nouveau and Secession periods at the turn of the 19th and early part of the 20th century. To revive old traditions lost during the Second World War and the Soviet occupation, six artists participated at a workshop held at the Siklós Ceramics Arts Center in southern Hungary in summer 2011. The aim of the workshop was to produce objects that would highlight Zsolnay’s traditional role in producing high-end ceramics and demonstrate the compatibility of techniques like eosin glaze with contemporary art and design. An express goal of the symposium: the presentation of those works in a special showing in New York City.The exhibition testifies to the unique reservoir of traditional techniques safeguarded at Zsolnay while showcasing the innovative potential for contemporary design highlighted by these iridescent and luminous glazes. Of special interest are a series of vases by Eva Zeisel, which she contributed to the Siklós symposium in 2011. These were originally designed for Royal Stafford, and now enriched with iridescent glazes. Re-contextualizing some of her late-career trademark designs, on view will be examples of select forms designed by her in 1983 when she was invited to collaborate with the Zsolnay factory. These designs for eosin-glaze pieces were first executed in 1998 in a limited number.

Artists include Viktor Erdei, a young designer at the  Zsolnay factory, whose works re-imagine Art Nouveau in their invocations of natural forms. Sándor Dobány is an expert in architectural ceramic design, and creates fantastical porcelain objects painted with surreal imagery. Zsuzsa Füzesi’s Whimsical Vessels series in eosin glaze investigate the geometries of structure and matter, and Edina Andrási’s experimental deconstructions of historical Zsolnay vases create objects that are both evocative of and radically different from their original sources.

Finally, New York-based artist Julia Kunin’s recent pieces explore concepts of excess, growth, and decay, often bringing to mind memento mori. The works incorporate iridescent glazes, which change constantly with the light, creating psychedelic surfaces on the baroque forms. Apart from her contribution as artist, Kunin both proposed the show to New York City partners and co-curated the exhibition.

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Opening reception and Artist talk: October 4, 7-9 pm.

Liliana Folta is a Latin American multidisciplinary artist. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.

“The potential ability of the imagination has an important impact in our lives. Minds have visual images that we collect through our lives.

These inner-images that represent my works are examinations of my existence. However, in this bank of memories I cherish every possible emotion; happiness, growing pains, family loss, first love, motherhood, sexuality, multicultural experiences, frustration, society’s rules and most importantly the celebration of life.

As an artist I like to work with different mediums especially acrylic paintings and ceramic sculptures. For the past few years I have been experimenting with mixed media installation. The freedom of expanding my work in another dimension makes me feel more connected with the viewers.

The process of my work mostly is very spontaneous; the rest comes along with what my subconscious has been saving in my bank of memories, throughout my life and the happening of the moment.”

Exhibition in collaboration with Mike Vickers (Light effects) and Gustavo Jiménez (Experimental sounds).
Curator: Olga Shmuylovich.

Liliana Fonta’s works are in several private and public collections in the United States, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Australia, Spain, Poland, Museum of Contemporary Ceramics - Dominican Republic, Ku Art Center - Beijing.

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Francesco Ardini’s profile on Ceramics Now Magazine - View his works

Francesco Ardini was born in Padua, Italy, and graduated in Landscape Architecture at the IUAV, Venice, in 2011. He discovered ceramics during the study years. Currently works in Padua and Nove.

The vision of reality in Ardini’s studies relates to broken objects, uneven surfaces, the apparent dissolution, the linearity undermined by failure. All these lead to a naturalism where the works provide biological cycles in which the dissolution is always followed by a formal definition.

Francesco Ardini understands the scientific course that begins with Einstein’s relativity, Max Planck’s quantum theory, going on with the Hubble’s discovery of galaxies, to land - in the second half of the twentieth century - within an epistemological revolution that places the possibility/probability above the necessity. Ardini accepts the idea that a large part of reality is not linear, but chaotic, and has a view of a universe development which will end in a cosmic catastrophe. These ideas place Ardini’s work in the sphere of conceptual art.

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David Gallagher’s profile on Ceramics Now Magazine - View his works

David Gallagher is a ceramic artist from Philadelphia who completed his undergraduate work at the Tyler School of Art-Temple University. He is currently pursuing his Masters of Fine Arts at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.

Research Statement
In our current epoch of ever more rapid invention it becomes paramount to analyze our relationships to the technology we produce. Systems are created on the foundations of existing technology and are tied to the accepted modes of history and the present.  These technologies mediate our experiences with the physical world. We no longer have hundreds of years to determine appropriate uses for the technology we create. In many cases this time frame can be compressed to months or even weeks, with the only criteria for its evaluation being its novelty. These tools we create enter our perception with singularity of purpose, and yet cause repercussions though out our whole cultural existence.

The primary focus of my artistic practice is the systems we create to manage our society. I am constantly investigating our understanding of the physical and psychological environments we construct. Humanity is driven to invent; to create tools that aid in the managing of society’s existence. Our instinctual proclivity to transcend what exists, to constantly refine and redefine our own existence is the central idea that drives my research. My work is a simulation and examination of systems that function within the constructs of social environments. These systems provide a framework for the investigation of the possibilities of context, specific iterations of conventional relationships.

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We just hit 25.000 followers on Tumblr.

Thank you so much to all of you. You are awesome!

Prize winning Polish-born artist Aneta Regel Deleu is a rapidly rising star on the European ceramic art horizon. She is an honors graduate of the Gdansk, Poland Fine Art Academy and London’s University of Westminster and Royal College of Art. This is her first exhibition at Puls Contemporary Ceramics Gallery.

“The main focus of my ceramic forms is the exploration of materials and their combinations. I am particularly interested combining the rough natural qualities of materials such as rock with malleable materials such as clay. The resulting juxtaposition of the natural and human-made creates a dramatic friction and tension. This reinforces the transformation and sense of movement that objects undergo during the passage from one state to another throughout the making process.”

Aneta Regel’s work seeks no functional path other than that of the communicative and expository power of art itself. Like certain of her mid-20th century pioneering artistic antecedents, she utterly rejects the label of potter. Simply because her medium is clay, fire and occasionally glaze, that does not make it craft. The designation of ceramist or ceramic artist—or better yet, ceramic sculptor—is both more expansive and accurate.

The human figure is not her vehicle of expression. Rather it is the trees, rocks, fields, and river-beds first encountered in her native northern Poland and later in her travels. Her formal language is abstract, creating a sort of equivalent to the natural world rather than attempting to describe it. Hers is a landscape, or more precisely, aspects of a landscape that create images through which she seeks to convey her vision of a reality we may already have encountered or indeed might yet encounter.

Regel is a romantic seeking to capture the forms, energies and rhythms of the forests and natural phenomena that have surrounded her. She has repeatedly been confronted by native rock, split and ground into powder by the power of glacial ice.

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Opening Reception: Friday, October 5, from 5-7 pm.

This October, Red Lodge Clay Center will present MOUNTED. An exhibit featuring the works of Lindsay Pichaske, Adelaide Paul, Ryan Blackwell, Thaddeus Erdahl, Amy Santoferraro, Christine Golden, Undine Brod and Roxanne Jackson. Topical to many regions is the ritual of hunting season and the provision of food. Just beyond the border of a ritual born of need are taxidermy arts, which can serve as an analogy for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The aforementioned survivalist skill sets are about harnessing natural elements. Decorative or trophy mounting came after our basic needs as humans were met. The work featured in this exhibit will, hopefully, explore the realm beyond basic needs and delve into hazards of modernity with frivolous, dark, and poignant mounts.

The exhibition will be posted online, Monday, October 7 by 10 am at the Red Lodge Clay Center’s website.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10 am - 6 pm. Sunday,  12 - 4 pm.

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