UNKNOWN PLACES is on view at Kunstforum Solothurn, Solothurn
June 28 – August 2, 2025
Exhibition titles are a component when I am planning a thematic exhibition. They set the framework for the search for works that correspond to my idea and intention. The title regularly changes during the development of the exhibition project, because the one originally chosen restricts the selection of works too much. It was the same this time: I liked the melody of paysages inconnues, but in the end it was too focussed on landscape, the more I realised what interested me about the theme and what I wanted to show.
PLACE can be translated in different ways in German (Platz, Ort, Standort, as well as Stelle.) When selecting the works shown in the exhibition, I was interested in their ambiguous, undefined localisation, combined with the questions: Does this localisation have anything to do with the environment in which the artist lives and works? What influence does the place of creation have on the work? Can the exhibited works be localised in art?
The UNKNOWN PLACES exhibition brings together works by fourteen ceramicists who deal with the topic in a variety of ways.
The work of Stephen Benwell (*1953, Australia) includes ceramics, drawings, works on paper and paintings. Although he has no formal training in ceramics, this medium forms the basis of his artistic practice. In his work he combines the ceramic with the painterly and sculptural concerns of the contemporary artist. The exhibited works combine art historical influences and his love for the countries of the Mediterranean, especially Italy.
Pippin Drysdale (*1943, Australia) was inspired to create her sensual series of vessels by a flight over the Tanami Desert in north-west Australia. The impressions and sensations she brought back from this journey are reflected in her Tanami series vessels. Today, other landscapes and coral reefs are also sources of inspiration for the artist. Her works are characterised by the colours of Australia and the art of the Aboriginals.
Ken Eastman (*1960, England) creates fascinating, multi-faceted works. Variations of texture and smoothness complement each other, naturalistic forms merge into angular architectural lines. His works reflect the impressions of the landscape and buildings that Ken Eastman collects on his bicycle tours around his home in the county of Herefordshire, which is known for its picturesque landscape of rolling hills and lush green fields.
Laure Gonthier (*1983, Switzerland) deals with the transformation of material and memory. After a stay in the snow-covered landscapes of Spitsbergen in Norway, she created the sculpture of the work group ‘Peau de glace’ (Ice Skin), which is reminiscent of the blurred contours of sea spray and the sharpness of ice. Fascinated by quarries, Laure Gonthier took sections of a landscape to transfer them into a new context, as in the works Artifice IX and Artifice X, which were created as part of the group of works La tendresse des pierres, in 2015.
With provocative ease, Hermann Grüneberg (*1983, Germany) switches between the sacred and the profane, crosses art historical, mass media and intercultural set pieces and masterfully proves that ceramics is not a supposedly marginalised area in the liberal arts. On the wall plates – today generally an expression of bourgeois homeliness – the supposed idylls begin to crumble. Their cosmos is animated by faces ranging from gloomy to ominous, allusive landscapes, otherworldly hybrid creatures and religious figures that stand in a symptomatic relationship to society.1
The anthropomorphic plants and forms created by Myung-Joo Kim (*1973, South Korea) explore the interactions between humans and nature and remind us of the life force that comes from within. The plants in Kim’s works are not images of nature, but visually embody the processes of life and introspection that stem from the artist’s inner experiences and reflections. The localisation of Homme plante II and Blue pulse takes place mentally.
Gestural expression is the main characteristic of the works of Brigitte Pénicaud (*1954, France). She turns her bowls on the disc, deliberately leaving the traces of her hand and then, in a spontaneous and violent act, changes the even surface in favour of an individual and liberated sculptural form. Using the same gestural style, she reworks and completes the surfaces with an expressive painting whose motifs originate from her surroundings and her everyday life in central France.
Landscape, by Laurin Schaub (*1984, Switzerland) is a series of porcelain tableware objects. Like islands, they form small enclosed landscapes on the table. Their use does not arise automatically from their form; only the attribution of their function turns them into a vessel. In this way, they push the boundaries of functionality and question the role and value of everyday objects of daily use.2
Isabelle Schick (*1958, Switzerland) has been living near Lake Gruyère for a few years now, surrounded by a gently rolling landscape. In the surrounding waters lie rounded river stones that have been polished by the water. These soft forms are echoed in the ceramist’s sculptures. The poetic titles and texts that form part of the works draw attention away from the pure contemplation of the landscape towards a physical and sensual perception and experience.
Over the years, Paul Scott (*1953, England) has evoked and explored a range of themes in his work, from foot-and-mouth disease to the impact of energy production on our environment. He has inserted nuclear and coal-fired power stations or wind turbines into landscapes and placed oil rigs in unspoilt Arctic regions. Paul Scott transforms old, factory-made crockery with subversive imagery that encourages renewed contemplation. He alters the detailed scenes, partially erasing them and adding new ones, fracturing the images and recalibrating them for a contemporary world.
Japan has been known for various forms of nature worship since ancient times. The ceramics by Naoki Takada (*1974, Japan) imitate Japanese mountain and glacier landscapes in miniature form. Bonzan is a mountain landscape depicted on a tray or plinth. Naoki Takada wants to emphasise the sublime beauty of the mountains with his archaic-looking works. The use of clay instead of stone is decisive for him because he utilises the original material of mountain formation. He sees it as a modern, evolving Bonzan and tries to revitalise it.
We are familiar with Akio Takamori’s (1950-2017, Japan/USA) depictions of people in all their uniqueness and diversity. At the height of his career, he surrounded his figures with peculiar, misty mountains or islands that clearly relate to traditional Chinese and Japanese landscape painting in ink. In the Orient, mountain and water are inextricably linked as an opposing yet complementary pair of concepts and together form the main elements of the landscape. Water and earth, which originates from the mountain, are also the basic components of ceramics. To reduce Akio Takamori’s landscapes to a mere transposition of oriental painting would be too short-sighted. The sculptor develops a very personal mode of expression and thus builds a bridge between the Japanese culture of his childhood and the West, where he lived for many years until his death.3
Lena Takamori (*1990, USA/England) finds the inspiration for her works in everyday life. In Cloud, Lena Takamori was interested in fingerprints and the feeling of movement. In the end, the fingerprints became rain, as she remembered a summer’s day when she saw rain clouds moving over a body of water. As a continuation of this idea, Mountain and Cloud was created. Lena Takamori’s landscapes and groups of trees invite viewers to enter the spaces in their thoughts, to walk through and explore them and thus to live an – albeit imaginary – experience.
Masamichi Yoshikawa (*1946, Japan) works exclusively with porcelain and sometimes develops imposing works that incorporate space, colour and texture and exude a mixture of calm and tension. Fascinated by the relationship between volume and emptiness and inspired by temples and shrines, he is known for his often architectural forms. These are covered with a transparent seihakuji celadon glaze, reminiscent of a cloudless sky or a glacier. For Yoshikawa Masamichi, the act of creating is like a prayer. In the artist’s words, they must be a place of welcome and benevolence for the kami, the spirit that inhabits them.
Text by Hanspeter Dähler
Contact
info@kunstforum.cc
Kunstforum Solothurn
Schaalgasse 9
CH-4500 Solothurn
Switzerland
Installation views by David Aebi
Footnotes
- Excerpt from: Christin Sobeck, A world in which all worlds fit. Between Adoration, Condemnation and Punk Exoticism of Chance, Ceramics 2020–2022, with texts by Ingo Uhlig and Christin Sobeck, Hasenverlag GmbH ISBN 978-3-945377-86-4
- Link
- Excerpt from: Anne-Claire Schumacher, text for the publication Akio Takamori Long Distance, Galerie Kunstforum Solothurn, 2016
