[rs_section_text_block style=”style2″ heading=”New Ceramics 6/2020 – Content”][/rs_section_text_block]

[rs_section_title title=”Extracts” class=”p-b-30″]Profile: Martha Pachón Rodríguez – I, Katharina Klug – UK, André Fasolin – CH, Mi Sook Hwang – KP / D.
Exhibitions: Seiffert Collection – Neunkirchen – D,  Slipcast Ceramics – Tegelen – NL, Experience – I/ Online
Artist-Journal: Eriko Inazaki + Sayaka Oishi
In Studio: Tan Chia Chuen – Evelyne Schoenmann[/rs_section_title]

[rs_section_text_block heading=”Martha Pachón Rodríguez” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Martha Pachon was born in Colombia, where she trained as a student and then as a teacher during the first part of her career. During her university courses she developed a great interest in photography, a medium that she found fascinating for its various alchemical possibilities. What attracted her was the idea of transforming materials into light, silently working with reagents in the solitude of the dark room. But life would later lead her in another, at first sight completely opposite, direction: the world of ceramics.
In order to learn more and specialize, Martha moved not to the nearby United States, where Orientally-inspired ceramic traditions were popular on the West Coast, but to Faenza, a small city in the Italian provinces. But this could not have occurred purely by chance. When she describes the years she spent at the Ballardini school, she melancholically recalls feeling out of place, a foreigner in a land with deep-rooted ceramics traditions. A location where the history of majolica is a strong presence, with significant connections to the history of art. In fact, at the Faenza museum, Martha saw how Italy’s great pictorial traditions, another constant theme of interest for her, were transposed into ceramics.

(Irene Biolchini)[/rs_section_text_block]

[rs_image_block image=”6989″ class=”p-t-30″]

[rs_promo_box style=”style7″ btn_text=”Order Now” link=”url:%23aboform||”]

Order easily on 02426-94 80 68 or by email on bestellungen@neue-keramik.de

[/rs_promo_box]

[rs_section_text_block heading=”Katharina Klug” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]In the same way that many children learn to bake cakes at their mother’s side, Katharina Klug learnt to make pots. Raised in a busy Austrian pottery, Klug was experimenting with clay as soon as she could reach the pedals on her mother’s wheel. Her unique childhood sparked a life-long fascination with the materials, form and chemistry of ceramics that led to years of study and continues to inspire her today as she produces award-winning porcelain vessels influenced by the elemental colours and shapes of ancient Korean pottery, yet decorated with very contemporary graphic patterns.
Klug’s monochrome vessels feature her trademark black stripes on white – every line is drawn by hand, the imperfections of the patterns making it lively, rough, immediate and unique. In contrast, Moonlit Birch and Broken Land display bursts of translucent glossy colour, created using glazes she has developed over many years. Pattern and mark-making is a strong theme in her current work, and she finds endless possibilities in simple line combinations.

(Helen Taylor)[/rs_section_text_block]

[rs_image_block image=”6987″ class=”p-t-30″]

[rs_section_text_block heading=”André Fasolin” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Things often don’t turn out as you first expect. André Fasolin and I had actually agreed to go on a hike together in the mountains where he finds the clay and rocks from which he makes his “Swiss Made” ceramics. However, the coronavirus pandemic intervened, and face masks and social distancing do not make good hiking companions. We therefore decided to embark on a virtual journey together.
The first thing I asked André was why he is so fascinated by rocks. He told me that even as a child he always had his eyes on the ground when he went out for walks, to spot fossils, crystals and mushrooms. When he was old enough to ride a moped, he set out armed with a hammer and goggles to gather crystals in quarries. A great-great-uncle of André Fasolin’s collected minerals at the turn of the century before last and great-great-nephew André inherited this “Crystal Room”, the inventory of a whole room full of crystals in glass display cases. By means of a text book for mineralogy, André catalogued the collection and learned a huge amount for his later vocation.
But the vocation too, like many things in André’s life, arrived only after various detours. When I asked him if he had wanted to be a ceramist when he was young, he shook his head. It was only in teacher training that he attended the ceramics course under ceramist Urs Germann from Basel. 

(Evelyne Schoenmann)[/rs_section_text_block]

[rs_image_block image=”6981″ class=”p-t-30″]

[rs_section_text_block heading=”Mi Sook Hwang” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]You can hardly believe it: her course at the private art academy, the Freie Kunstakademie Nürtingen, was only just over two years ago. In spring 2018, her graduation exhibition took place there by the River Neckar. Mi Sook Hwang has only just become a ceramist. But since becoming one a lot has happened. She has developed her approach rigorously, gained recognition for her work in many places and has received a number of awards.
It is the graphically conceived vessel that concerns her. Right at the outset, in a small brochure she made it quite clear what she was striving for. Originally from Korea, she now lives in Münchweiler in the Palatinate Forest, southwest Germany, and she knows how to design such a publication. She studied print media design and worked in the field, designing magazine pages, advertising, books and more. In Germany, she decided on a radical change – from paper to ceramics.
The booklet with which she introduces herself as a ceramist is the loveliest imaginable example of her work in the field of printed presentation – a vessel for images of vessels in a handy square format, with its textured, warm, yellow-white paper it is an all-round tactile object. In it, Mi Sook Hwang reveals herself to be a disciplined, material-aware artisan. 

(Volker Bauermeister)[/rs_section_text_block]

[rs_image_block image=”6990″ class=”p-t-30″]

[rs_section_text_block heading=”FOCUS ON CERAMICS II – The Hannelore Seiffert Collection” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Exhibition until 3 January 2021

With a highly regarded exhibition in 2018, the Städtische Galerie Neunkirchen (Neunkirchen municipal gallery) for the first time in the Saarland gave an insight into the unique private ceramic art collection of Hannelore Seiffert.
Under the title of BRENNPUNKT KERAMIK (“Focus on Ceramics”) the show brought together well over 100 exhibits from this collection of major international ceramic art comprising a total of 1,200 pieces. In the centre of the presentation and of the accompanying catalogue were figurative and abstract pieces that impressed the public and the experts alike with their great artistic quality and the abundance of possibilities for sculptural expression that the medium opens up.
BRENNPUNKT KERAMIK II presents approximately 120 unique pieces from more than 60 artists, from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Hungary, Czechia, Israel, Turkey, the USA, Canada, Chile, Japan and South Korea. Her exhibits reflect the wide range of contemporary ceramics that make the boundaries between figurative and abstract, fine and applied art become fluid. [/rs_section_text_block]

[rs_image_block image=”6992″ class=”p-t-30″]

[rs_section_text_block heading=”SlipCast Ceramics – The Art of Slipcasting” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Casting clay slip with all its facets. An international selection of artists shows how versatile this technique can be. They employ this technique with great inventiveness. Their work ranges from particularly fanciful to technical with clean design or organic and whimsical. They demonstrate that with this reproduction method highly original and unique works of art can be created.
Originally, slipcast ceramics were intended to be produced more quickly in series. Large editions with exactly the same form, with casting edges and production marks removed. This is the how it is in the ceramics industry for the production of tableware, vases, toilet bowls, washbasins, garden gnomes and much else. But there are plenty of other things to do with it. 

Exhibition: Slipcast Ceramics, The art of Casting Slip, Until 17 January 2021
Keramikzentrum , Tiendschuur Tegelen, Kasteellaan 8, 5932 AG Tegelen, The Netherlands[/rs_section_text_block]

[rs_image_block image=”6993″ class=”p-t-30″]

[rs_section_text_block heading=”EXPERIENCE – Matres International Women’s Ceramic Festival” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]28 – 30 August 2020
The Matres International Women’s Ceramic Festival – Experience: an international event for the promotion of female ceramic art and creativity.
Due to the worldwide health emergency caused by Covid 19, the second edition of the Festival took place on a digital platform. It was to be a specially successful Special Edition with exhibitions, events, conferences, important international contacts and more.
A number of international encounters that – starting from Cava de’Tirreni, home of the association PANDORA and of the government of Campania – networked with the rest of the world for the promotion and dissemination of art and culture – not only ceramically speaking but in all its forms of expression. If the Festival had taken place under normal circumstances, approximately 600 women artists from all over the world would have met in Cava.

(Anna Rita Fasano)[/rs_section_text_block]

[rs_image_block image=”7005″ class=”p-t-30″]

[rs_section_text_block heading=”Artist Journal: Eriko Inazaki and Sayaka Oishi” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Eriko Inazaki  (Japan)
Eriko Inazaki was born in 1972 in Japan. Inazaki creates two to three pieces of work each year, using clay strips 0.1 to 0.2 cm in width to capture imaginative sceneries. Japanese art critic Kazuko Todate once wrote about Inazaki’s attitude in art. Compared with the profit and fame-driven attitude in younger generations, she lives for her art, meaning that her art is strongly connected to her will to live, and therefore her art sustains her life. In Inazaki Eriko’s works, I feel her utmost concentration – calm in a state of Zen.

Sayaka Oishi   (Japan)
Oishi born in Kyoto Pref. Japan in 1980. The construction of a lovely lucky cat holding carp and other auspicious things with the plants and sea animals surprises us with the fragments of body parts or faces of humans or animals. The constitution of both the cat and the other things are so dizzyingly intricate and diverse that the profusion of colours borders on being a luxurious but slightly horrible banquet. 

(Ting-Ju SHAO)  [/rs_section_text_block]

[rs_image_block image=”6985″][rs_image_block image=”6986″ class=”p-t-30″]

[rs_section_text_block heading=”In Studio with Tan Chia Chuen” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Chia Chuen, you are the first nonprofessional ceramist in my In Studio interview series. Can you tell our readers your professional background?
Evelyne, I would like to first thank you for the interview and glad to be a first. I am currently heading the tax functions in a Singapore listed multinational corporation, with the key responsibilities of managing the Group’s compliance with international tax regulations and tax strategies – a job that I guess is seemingly unrelated to ceramic art.

You once told me that you make ceramic art in your spare time. How did it all begin?
My interest before making ceramics is gardening and my initial interest in ceramics was triggered by the idea of making personalized ceramic vessels for my plants. All these changed after my encounter with ceramics, in the year 2014, and ceramic art is instead my main interest now. My spare time during weekends is in fact mostly devoted to ceramics.

(Evelyne Schoenmann)[/rs_section_text_block]

[rs_image_block image=”6982″ class=”p-t-30″]

[rs_section_title style=”style2″ title=”Purchase a single issue here” class=”m-b-30″]Each issue is 11€ in Germany incl. 7% VAT, 11€ (EU), US$ 12€, 15sFr in Switzerland. Postage is calculated individually for single copies. (3,70€)[/rs_section_title]

[rs_contact_form form_id=”6492″]