Bente Skjøttgaard: Nature and Glaze is on view at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, Middelfart
April 6 – October 26, 2025
In her endeavour to render cloud formations, rotting tree stumps and glossy glaze lakes, Bente Skjøttgaard (b. 1961) has been challenging the possibilities of clay for more than four decades. Her continuous effort to capture nature’s fleeting phenomena in ceramic form has resulted in numerous sculptures with a distinctive and unique expression.
In this exhibition, Bente Skjøttgaard invites us on a personal journey through her body of work. In a display of 14 themes, she recounts her artistic development, works, experiments and exhibitions, illustrating how one idea often naturally has led to the next. From her graduation from Kunsthåndværkerskolen (School of Arts and Crafts) in Kolding in 1986, we follow her early explorative experiments with the balance between function and aesthetic that led to her design of organically shaped bathroom experiments during the 1990s, among other outcomes.
In Glaze Pieces, she is drawn in by the endless possibilities of glaze, followed by the emergence of her uniquely personal universe of form during the 2000s, based on the ever-changing phenomena of nature. In complex sculptural constructions of drifting thunder clouds, submarine jellyfish or piled-up tree branches, she pushes her material to the limit in an effort to capture fleeting natural phenomena in tangible form.
Today, Bente Skjøttgaard is recognized as one of our leading ceramic artists, moving effortlessly between the delicate and fragile and the powerful and fierce. Bente Skjgttgaard has made her mark as a ceramicist for four decades and has achieved great recognition, both in Denmark and internationally. In Denmark, she received the three-year working grant from the Danish Arts Foundation (2001-03) and the Annie & Otto Johs. Detlefs’ Ceramics Prize in 2005. Internationally, she has exhibited in Paris, London and New York. This spring, she is exhibiting in Paris – alongside Nature and Glaze at CLAY – in connection with the 70th anniversary of La Maison du Danaemark (The House of Denmark) and also taking part in the international group exhibition Vivant et en devenir (Alive & Unfolding) in Namur, Belgium.
To coincide with the exhibition, Bente Skjøttgaard is launching her monograph ‘Nature and Glaze’, published by German art publisher Hatje Cantz with texts in English and French.
Contact
info@claymuseum.dk
CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art
Kongebrovej 42 5500
Middelfart
Denmark
Captions
- Installation View, Nature and Glaze at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, 2025. Photo: Ole Akhøj
Installation View – Gasurstykker/Glazed Items, Nature and Glaze at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, 2025. Photo: Ole Akhøj
Installation View – Family Trees, Nature and Glaze at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, 2025. Photo: Ole Akhøj
Installation View – Fullere/Fullerenes, Nature and Glaze at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, 2025. Photo: Ole Akhøj
Cumulus #1626, 2016, Installation View, Nature and Glaze at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, 2025. Photo: Ole Akhøj
Bathroom Items, 1997, Installation View, Nature and Glaze at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, 2025. Photo: Ole Akhøj
Cumulus #1627, 2016, Installation View, Nature and Glaze at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, 2025. Photo: Ole Akhøj
Installation View – Family Trees, Nature and Glaze at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, 2025. Photo: Ole Akhøj - Cloud #1796, 2017. Photo: Ole Akhøj
Metamorphosis, purple #1722, 2017. Photo: Ole Akhøj
Timberline #2327, 2023. Photo: Ole Akhøj
