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[rs_section_title title=”Extracts” class=”p-b-30″]Profile: Katharina Link – D,  Barbara Hertwig – D, Anca Vintila Dragu – RO, Ana Maria Asan – B
Exhibitions: Celadon in Focus – Zurich – Switzerland, Salon der Keramik – Giessen – Germany, Woodfire Festival – Yixing and Shanghai – China
Artist-Journal: Tanja Smeets – Netherlands and Tip Toland – USA
In Studio: Maria ten Kortenaar  – Evelyne Schoenmann[/rs_section_title]

[rs_section_text_block heading=”Katharina Link” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]For many of us in western Germany, the ceramics from the former GDR remain terra incognita that is yet to be discovered. As there are only very few galleries in the country that have set themselves the task of acquainting us with art from earth, ceramics that is, all we have are the numerous pottery markets all over the country. But are they a fully fledged substitute for the missing galleries? Nevertheless it is possible – with a little luck – to make finds there, for instance in Diessen am Ammersee. This is where after many years I met Katharina Link again, who long ago, when her mother was still working in Cologne, had exhibited on her premises. I wanted to learn more about her and her work and visited her in Müncheberg, in the state of Brandenburg. 

(Antje Soléau)[/rs_section_text_block]

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[rs_section_text_block heading=”Barbara Hertwig” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Lifelong learning, don’t stand still, don’t be satisfied with what you have achieved – the experiment is too seductive. Buzzwords like these may be applicable to many artistic creators but that diminishes none of their rele-vance with regard to describing an artist’s position and how it has developed. A multiplicity of experience leaves its marks, they may fade, are eclipsed or overwritten. But this matrix is the basis on which artistic practice flourishes.
The convoluted career path of Barbara Hertwig now covers four decades of a past in the GDR up to the present in the Federal Republic of Germany. When she was not admitted to art school after graduation from secondary education, she decided to do a potter’s apprenticeship, where she acquired a solid grounding in craft, which was considerably expanded in her subsequent training as master craftswoman. It was this in particular that has equipped her right up to the present to work as a freelance artist, both technically and organisationally. On the way to qualification, she became acquainted with all areas of ceramics, from small potteries to full-scale industrial operations, from earthenware to porcelain, from architectural ceramics to refined ornamental pieces. The frequent shortages of materials in the GDR developed her creativity, for instance in discovering natural ceramic raw materials, preparing them and experimenting with them. 

(Christian  Lechelt)[/rs_section_text_block]

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[rs_section_text_block heading=”Anca Vintila Dragu” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]In the past years, Anca Vintila’s name has been impetuously added to Romanian ceramic art. Born in 1976, drawn by arts since adolescence, but firstly graduate of economic studies, and consequently having a successful career in corporate marketing, Anca Vintila Dragu grew close to the world of porcelain and clay, and obtained her bachelor’s degree in decorative arts in 2016, followed by a master’s degree in 2018 in the same field. She’s been exhibiting her art for a decade now. She became part of Galateea Art Gallery in Bucharest, joining the Galateea Group of ceramists which, along with the school of Cluj, have been impressing the genre at the top of local visual arts in the past decades. They’ve also energetically asserted themselves around the world.
During her creative explorations, Anca Vintila Dragu followed two essential paths: she modelled ludic and comical series, as well as some sober-reflexive series, characterized by a more poignant symbolism, with more self-assumed philosophical meanings.

 

(Ion Bogdan Lefter)[/rs_section_text_block]

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[rs_section_text_block heading=”Ana Maria Asan” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]The first objects belonging to the SONORES project (a metonymy for Céramiques sonores) were born in 2010-2011, in a key moment of my life, in close connexion with what I really am as an artist and a person. This year and the next one, I will celebrate the first decade of the project’s existence, a living, uninterrupted exploration of ceramics and its sonorous dimension that places my work in the field of contemporary art, both as sound art (experimental acoustic music) and contemporary ceramics (installation and sculpture).
As my work always met appreciation and enthusiasm abroad, it would be great to collaborate in the near future also with Belgian and Romanian art partners in relation with this ten year anniversary (regarding Ceramic Art Andenne 2021, I am optimistically working on it). Anyway, meeting a new audience anywhere in the world remains essential to me.
To begin with, I would like to express my warmest thoughts to those who vibrated in unison with me, supported partially the project or made it visible. Before starting it, the Belgian ceramicist Jean-Claude Legrand generously taught me for several years almost everything I know about clay.[/rs_section_text_block]

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[rs_section_text_block heading=”Salon der Keramik” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Guests: Umibaizurah Mahir and Mohammad Al Khuzairi-Ali  

Special guests of the exhibition and workshop series, Salon der Keramik -touch- Keramische Konstruktionen und Assemblagen, at Atelier Z-Keramik were Umibaizurah Mahir und Muhammad Al Khuzairie-Ali, who live and work in the region of Kuala Lumpur. In conversation about their work, we leafed through some catalogues and soon came to speak about their last solo exhibition, Fragile.
Like in their current work, ceramics were the focus there, but Mahir also works on canvas and combines it with ceramics as well as giving her works metal constructions. In the piece, The Lady Smokey Haze, Mahir shows the classic bust of Elisabeth, the wife of the former prime minister of Malaysia.

(Heide Margret Zavaczki)[/rs_section_text_block]

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[rs_section_text_block heading=”Celadon in Focus” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Jade-like porcelains and their masters in Longquan, PR China

The deep green-blue landscapes of Zhejiang in southwest China and the flawless craftsmanship with which the local ceramists transfer the palette of light and colour of their surroundings into celadon porcelains has been on show since 24 November 2019 at the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich (VMZ) in the exhibition Celadon in Focus – Jade-like Porcelains and their Masters in Longquan. Until at least 22 October 2020, 18 master craftspeople will be representing the history, technology and the repertoire of a fascinating craft with their contemporary celadons, at the same time demonstrating its closeness to nature.
Those unable to travel to Zurich may wish to study the publication of the same name edited by sinologist, ceramist and guest curator Anette Mertens in cooperation with sinologist, technology ethnographer and director of the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich, Professor Mareile Flitsch.

(Anette Mertens)[/rs_section_text_block]

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[rs_section_text_block heading=”Woodfire Ceramics Festival in Yixing and Shanghai, China” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Yixing has become synonymous with teapots, an essential tool for tea drinking. Tea culture, even for a foreigner, is a rich and complex, highly significant element of Chinese culture.
Daily use enhances Yixing teapots. And Yixing clay teapots enhance tea. Drinking and sharing tea is about fellowship. It is about sharing and creating dialogue and friendship. Drinking tea in China is layered with ritual and it is a deeper way to say hello and extend kind regards and a wish for companionship.
During difficult times, hot tea helped people stay warm and gave some energy to drinkers. Tea is a healthy healing agent and so when people drink tea together, they are helping one another in many ways. Whenever one enters a Yixing house or shop, there is almost always a kind person offering this medicine for the body and soul.
The ritual of tea and the beauty of Yixing teapots and tea implements is a kind of poetry that fascinates any sensitive person. Yixing Dingshan City tea culture is unique and eternal.

(Marc Leuthold / Qin Ling)[/rs_section_text_block]

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[rs_section_text_block heading=”Artist Journal: Tanja Smeets and Tip Toland” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Tanja Smeets  (Netherlands)
Born in the Netherlands in 1963, the contemporary artist Tanja Smeets prepared her works at the EKWC for her 2019 exhibition in the Princessehof Ceramics Museum. Her mixed media works spread and proliferate in public spaces, in museums and galleries, in which their tiny elements characterized by sensibility and sophistication build up a whole that extends and changes, with strong tensions and rhythms that dazzle the viewer’s eyes. 

Tip Toland   (USA)
Invited to exhibit in the 2018 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale for the first time in Asia, Tip Toland (*1950), whose vivid and exquisite large sculptures have amazed and dazzled the viewers, was then immediately awarded the Grand Prize of the Korean International Ceramic Biennale 2019 Award.
They epitomize not only the people around us, but also the vulnerability of humanity. Notably, the flaws, delicacy, and inner conflicts she exposes imply a learning from and an acceptance of the deficiencies of life. 

(Ting-Ju SHAO)  [/rs_section_text_block]

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[rs_section_text_block heading=”In Studio with Maria ten Kortenaar” btn_link_one=”url:%23||” btn_link_two=”url:%23||”]Maria, originally you trained as a silver and goldsmith. Would you tell us a bit about your biography and how you came to work with clay?
I went to art school in the eighties and after some years making jewellery, I felt an increasing desire to work with colour. So I tried clay. Clay gave me the opportunity to work with colour, and the nature of this material allowed me to form it freely, that made me happy. These days I work exclusively with porcelain because of the brightness of the colours in porcelain.

Are you still using similar techniques that you worked with as a goldsmith?
My previous study as a goldsmith accustomed me to a precise way of working and putting many tiny pieces together to create an object, as I’m an autodidact for ceramics I invented the way I work myself so I guess it is a bit like goldsmithing. 

(Evelyne Schoenmann)[/rs_section_text_block]

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