In the PROFILES section: Eight ceramic artists from Spain, Italy, UK, Switzerland, Latvia. Coverage of EXHIBITIONS and EVENTS in Germany, Italy, UK, Ireland, Israel, Germany/Russia. In the section ARTIST JOURNAL, we present Lu Bin and Christine Yiting Wang. And we also have interviews with artists IN STUDIO as well as listings of Dates, Courses, Seminars and Markets.
NEWS
PROFILES
Caterina Roma – Spain
Karin Putsch Grassi – Italy
James Ort – UK
Mirco Denicolo – Italy
Léandre Burkard – Switzerland
Inese Brants – Latvia
EXHIBITIONS / EVENTS
Forum – Gustav Weiß – International
Celadon – Galerie Heller – Germany
Galileo Chini – MIC Faenza – Italy
Margaret Curtis – UK
Ireland – Elaine O. Henry – Ireland
Israel – Maria Geszler-Garzuly – Israel
Vika Mitrichenko, Staufen – Germany / Russia
“Paradise Garden” – Velten, Nicole Seydewitz + Lars Lierow – Germany
Review of documenta15 – Monika Gass – International
Coke firing – Barbara Kuschnarew-Wünsch – Germany
BOOKS
New literature
ARTIST JOURNAL
Lu Bin, China + Christine Yiting Wang, Taiwan/ U.S.A – Ting-Ju Shao
IN STUDIO
Marga Boogaard, NL – Evelyne Schoenmann – Interview / Developing Skills
DATES / Exhibitions / Galleries / Museums
COURSES / SEMINARS / MARKETS
ADVERTISEMENTS
PREVIEW
Caterina Roma is a self-taught ceramicist, who has grown artistically on her own and has managed to make a name for herself in rather a unique way. Her solid, robust perspective makes her one of the most interesting proponents of contemporary artistic ceramics in Catalonia. Her pieces openly reveal one of her main sources of inspiration, Eastern ceramics, and reflect how different traditions can offer a truly positive insight into achieving an unfettered, authentically personal artistic expression.
In her ceramics, Caterina Roma has found a path for her personal growth and with it, a path to mature as a ceramicist and artist capable of transforming wild clay into exquisite pieces, all by herself and with no artifice. She was born in Lleida and educa-ted in Barcelona in Semitic studies and comparative literature. Roma has built her world view on these solid intellectual foundations, which have also convinced her to approach the world of ceramics through her intuition. In 2011 she decided to focus uniquely on ceramics, experimenting with it to find a path to fulfilment and personal growth and making it her priority and her modus vivendi. It was then that she set up a small workshop in a house in the Putxet neighbourhood, the area that had welcomed the ceramist Llorens Artigas after the war.
(Ricard Bru)
Caterina Roma
James Ort is a ceramic and wire artist from the United Kingdom who specialises in making animals from clay, many of which have mixed media elements such as wire and sheet metal. He was introduced to the world of ceramics when he was invited to manage the Phoenix Studio – a small art school in rural Oxfordshire. Thrust into the vibrant and creative community around him, James was lucky to rekindle his creative side that had largely been neglected throughout his late teens and most of his twenties.
James spent his youth with a pencil or paintbrush in his hand. He is from a creative family and was lucky enough to have a grandfather called Brian Price Thomas, who was an artist and also passionate about the natural world. “Growing up I thought all grandparents had cool jobs,” says James. “One grandfather illustrated the Ladybird Children’s Books in the 1970/80’s, the other was a Master Baker and my grandma designed swimsuits and bras for WonderBra!” However, James wasn’t always given sound advice growing up. “My grandfather and others told me not to study art beyond school; instead, they said do something to fall back on for when you don’t make it as an artist.” With a tinge of regret, James followed their advice and studied biology at university.
James Ort
Monika Gass speaks to Léandre Burkhard
When I saw your amazing pieces – the “melted vessels“ at the castle of Nyon during the AIC conference, I was blown away! So beautiful! How did you come to those awesome surfaces, colours and forms?
The first piece in this series was a bit unexpected, I was experimenting on the wheel and had few different materials in my hands. I just decided to pile them together and thrown an object. I made a small vessel, glazed it and fired it. When it came out of the kiln it was a very good surprise, some parts of the object had started to melt and expand while others just stayed as they were. I immediately felt that there was something to explore more and decided to continue to work further on this idea but with more methodology.
What kind of expectations did you have when you started? What kind of ceramics did you start with – and were there ever changes – in form and/or material?
I graduated in 2003 and it took me time to get here. I think I built my career as a ceramicist pretty slowly, experimented a lot, thinking in between. Mostly I handbuilt abstract sculptures, worked with slip casting, even a 3D ceramic printer. Even if my first love for ceramics came with the potter’s wheel, I didn’t use it for many years after the school, thinking that it was maybe a little bit obsolete. But few years ago, I started to work with this tool again and rediscovered that there are so many interesting ways of using it in fields that haven’t been explored yet.
Léandre Burkhard
The focus of Inese Brants’ creative oeuvre is porcelain painting. She is one of the stars on the Latvian contemporary ceramics scene and her relationship with porcelain has been long, passionate, full of joy, but also torment, beginning from her initial studies at the Riga School of Applied Art and later at the Art Academy of Latvia. I believe the remark about her promising artistic potential by Peteris Martinsons years ago – an acknowledged authority in ceramics in Latvia and abroad – has been prophetic. She is creativity in her own self. It refers not only to the numerous solo exhibitions and her participation in international group shows, but also to the hard organisational work and leadership of the international porcelain painting symposia that have been running for many years at the Zvartava Castle, today the International Art and Education Centre of the Latvian Artists’ Union. She practices porcelain painting, studies the discipline, publishes books describing the results of her research on porcelain decoration technologies and teaches this craft to children, which means a lot for its sustainability.
Porcelain painting means everything to her – it is the love of her life. She is a dazzling personality and at the same time very focused, one even might say a perfectionist. Usually friendly, with a spark of humorous naughtiness, her brown eyes suddenly darken with indignity when she spots inaction, negligence towards material, technology or inaccurate artistic performance.
(Dace Lavina)
Inese Brants
A new exhibition offers insights into the history, technology and knowledge in the celadon metropolis of Longquan and presents outstanding pieces by contemporary celadon masters. A framework of reference is also presented within which this community of ceramists is continuing and revitalising this highly esteemed craft of celadon.
The exhibition explains the repertoire, aesthetics and the high regard that celadon is once again enjoying in Asia today.
A targeted selection of exhibits shows how celadon pieces from the 12th and 21st centuries correspond, making beauty and craftsmanship comprehensible and directly tangible.
The Celadon Project was launched in 2005. Many years of exchange between colleagues and numerous mutual visits via China at Work have gradually cast their spell over more and more people interested in the celadon craft of the Longquan ceramists through pottery trips, exhibitions, lectures and workshops: in Berlin 2015, then at the Ceramics Museum Westerwald in 2017, with the titel “SELADON MASTERS”.
(Anette Mertens and Mareile Flitsch)
The exhibition runs from 12 March – 30 April 2023
Galerie Marianne Heller
Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage 2 / Im Stadtgarten
D-69117 Heidelberg | Germany
Chen Hua, spherical vase with pale blue (fenqing) glaze and raised decor, 2014, 21.5 x 26 x 26 cm photo: Monika Gass
Ceramics between Art Nouveau and Déco
At MIC / Faenza, Italy until May 14, 200 works among ceramics and preparatory drawings
To Galileo Chini, a versatile artist, one of the pioneers of Art Nouveau in Italy and a refined interpreter of the Déco taste developed in the twenties, the MIC International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, is dedicating a great exhibition from 26 November 2022 to 14 May 2023.
The exhibition, Galileo Chini – Ceramics between Art Nouveau and Déco, curated by Claudia Casali and Valerio Terraroli, exhibits about two hundred pieces, with ceramics (including unpublished ones) and preparatory drawings to document the various phases of activity of the two manufactories founded by Galileo Chini: L’Arte della Ceramica, established in Florence in 1896, and the Fornaci San Lorenzo, opened in 1906 in Borgo San Lorenzo in Mugello, near Florence, of which Galileo was the artistic director. The ceramics created by the manufactories were famous for their refined decorations, at first inspired by Art Nouveau floral motifs and Botticelli-influenced female figures, then characterized by lustre glazes, synthetic decorations and a varied range of stoneware pieces.
Decorative plate with female profile and flowers, 1898-1900, Arte de la Ceramica , MIC Faenza inv. n. 5778
A collective of artists from Jakarta – ruangrupa – curated the 15th documenta last year and based it on the values and ideas of “lumbung”, an Indonesian word for something shared – probably literally “the rice barn”. The aim was to focus on once indispensable, firmly rooted civilizational values such as community, rituals, the preservation of knowledge and traditions, collectivity, participation, togetherness, the common development of resources and a fair distribution of belongings. A colorful mix of artistically virtuosic, often symbolic, often naturalistic portrayals pointedly changes the economic, egoistic, limited of our day. A model that points to this is this elusive “lumbung” – this rice barn – and therefore not without controversy. The effect of this brightly colored presentation, which was provocative in a quiet to shrill way, must have seemed strange to a guest list accustomed to art and cult or gallery appearances by well-known greats. We didn’t save on criticism either!
I was deeply impressed that – as soon as I (like MANY other guests) around me) get involved in this looking and experiencing, in feeling what is dazzlingly presented in a thousand media, that one thing quickly becomes urgently clear: this in all areas the exhibition implemented as part of the cooperation, the presentation of this canon of values from – “lumbung”. That does something to me.
(Monika Gass)
Terracotta Embassy Activation – Terracotta Friendship / Jatiwangi art Factory
Christine Yiting Wang ( Taiwan/ U.S.A)
Christine Yiting Wang(1987) was born in Austin, U.S.A. and graduated with an M.F.A. in Ceramic Art from Kyoto City University of Arts. Fascinated by the process and moments of excavation of relics and fossils of ancient animals and plants, she focused on the fossils of sea creatures on the vessels found in the ocean, documenting how nature destroyed by humans was reborn as the creatures on the vessels by subtly constructing those weathered corals, organisms and seashells.
Lu Bin (China)
The contemporary pioneering Chinese ceramicist Lu Bin (born 1961) has been documenting the development of Chinese society through his works. From the 2016 work Midas Touch to the 2017 Great Compassion Mantra series, they demonstrate how the spiritual significance and traditional essence of Yixing teapots and pagodas as important cultural traditions and symbols have been distorted in the prevalence of money worship. In the 2022 Shattered Mirage and Re-Assembled, what is broken are people’s minds and environments, and what is reconstructed is a future that the artist hopes to create through the hands of viewers, who are invited to take pieces from the 1000 works on the table and place them on a pedestal. The wishes of the people will finally form a tower of hope.
(Ting-Ju SHAO)
Christine Yiting Wang
Lu Bin
Marga, let’s start with your biography and your professional career.
I came into contact with clay by chance. From the age of 40, I became severely hard of hearing. This is a hereditary condition in my family. It made me feel insecure and tense and I started looking for activities that would give me relaxation and in which I could express my creativity. After attending a workshop, I became enthusiastic and then took the three-year course, the Nederlandse Keramiek Opleiding, NKO, in Gouda. This was followed by the extra year of glazing and the extra year of hand moulding. They were wonderful years but also very tough as a hearing-impaired person. With the help of solo equipment, fellow students and teachers, I persevered. In that final year, you had to start choosing your own direction. I then started experimenting with extruded rolls of clay. Just because I had already made a ball from thick rolls of clay. I thought it should be possible to do the same with small rolls. When I presented a number of works at school, my teacher said I had tapped into a source because this technique did not yet exist. And so my ceramics career began. After my final exams, the NKO bought a piece and I was immediately allowed to exhibit at the annual ceramics market in Gouda. There I won the second prize.
(Evelyne Schoenmann)
Marga Boogaard
