Return to Ceramics is on view at MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Krakow
March 30 – September 17, 2023
Curator: Mirosława Bałazy
Return to Ceramics is an exhibition of works by contemporary artists who use the medium of ceramics in their practice. At the core of the exhibition are works from the MOCAK Collection by Feiko Beckers, Burçak Bingöl, Nschotschi Haslinger, Agata Kus, Justyna Smoleń and Jakub Julian Ziółkowski. In addition, the exhibition features pieces by Wojciech Ireneusz Sobczyk, Aleksandra Liput, Natalia Kopytko and Tomek Kulka.
For centuries, ceramics has been used for utilitarian and decorative purposes. In Europe, its heyday was in the 17th and 18th centuries, when Delft was famous for faience and the Meissen manufactory for porcelain.
Ceramics also proved to be an interesting medium for art. It was used by avant-garde artists. Contemporary artists are also looking for new meanings and surprising formal possibilities in ceramics.
The exhibition includes works that span almost the full range of the medium’s potential – from hyper-realistic representations of nature to objects resembling destruction.
Feiko Beckers draws on Dutch traditions and the custom of placing folk proverbs and biblical quotations on plates, transforming them into his own sentences taking the form of absolute truths. Justyna Smoleń, meanwhile, plays with the traditions of Meissen porcelain, deconstructing it and creating sculptural collages. Burçak Bingöl places great emphasis on the decorative layer of ceramics in her work at the same time, however, deliberately destroying the aesthetic decoration by deforming the object with morbid growths. Tomek Kulka creates figurines and objects related to religious worship. Agata Kus’s figures stride the borderline between the world of fantasy and reality, and make a strong impact with their uniform blackness. The vases by Julian Jakub Ziółkowski are plastered with faces commented on in his text Sick of Love. Aleksandra Liput’s Guardian Fungi form a site-specific installation. Their site refers to a plant-like prototype. Wojciech Ireneusz Sobczyk builds mysterious gardens composed of intricately crafted plants. Quasi-rhizomes, shoots and roots entwine the Crowns by Natalia Kopytko. Nschotschi Haslinger’s phallic-plant feet, despite using a noble technique, look as if made of plasticine.
Return to Ceramics presents a gamut of very different artistic concepts. They feature fragments of nature and objects evoking rituals, as well as things and texts that are banal. In these works, you will find emotion, irony, ridicule and indeed spirituality.
Contact
office@mocak.pl
MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow
ul. Lipowa 4
30-702 Krakow
Poland
Photos: R. Sosin
