In the PROFILES section: Eight ceramic artists from Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, India, Austria. Coverage of EXHIBITIONS and EVENTS in Italy,Germany, Ukraine, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany. In the section ARTIST JOURNAL, we present Stéphanie Baechler and Wu Wei-cheng. And we also have interviews with artists IN STUDIO as well as listings of Dates, Courses, Seminars and Markets.
NEWS
PROFILES
Annette Wandrer – Germany
Gabriele Tognoloni – Italy
Interview with Ranti Tjan – Netherlands
Astrid Zwick – Switzerland
Adil Writer – India
Margit Denz – Austria
Susan Heise – Germany
EXHIBITIONS / EVENTS
Nino Caruso – Forms of Memory and Space – Faenza – Italy
Fairytales of the World – Schloss Rheinsberg – Germany
Ukranian artists – Ukraine
Biennale Révélations 2022 – Paris – France
Jingdezhen International Ceramic Biennale – Jingdezhen – China
Artists choose Colour – Tegelen – Netherlands
Students’ graduation pieces – Höhr-Grenzhausen – Germany
Liz Larner. below above – Kunsthalle Zürich – Switzerland
Now – from here … – Heidelberg – Germany
BOOKS
New literature
ARTIST JOURNAL
Stéphanie Baechler (Switzerland) and Wu Wei-cheng (Taiwan) – Ting-Ju Shao
IN STUDIO
Paula Bastiaansen – Evelyne Schoenmann – Interview / Developing Skills
DATES / Exhibitions / Galleries / Museums
COURSES / SEMINARS / MARKETS
ADVERTISEMENTS
PREVIEW
Over the course of his artistic career, Gabriele Tognoloni experimented with many techniques and visual languages before specialising in ceramics in the early 2000s. The decision to adopt the art of earth and fire reflects his desire to give tangible form to a poetic vision of the world that could reveal the skills acquired over years of apprenticeship with masters such as Edgardo Abbozzo and Eliseo Mattiacci, and his explorations in the company of exceptional guides such as Jannis Kounellis and Eduard Winklofer. This led to the definition of a mode of expression hallmarked by works that, becoming part of the millennial history of ceramics with its techniques, materials and concepts, advance its interpretative and semantic boundaries, demonstrating familiarity with sculpture, graphic design and engraving, as well as the artistic use of metals and wood.
In deciding to utilize materials and techniques with centuries of venerable tradition in order to say something new and meaningful in the realm of art, Gabriele Tognoloni’s course of action was both inevitable and courageous.
(Cesare Coppari)
Gabriele Tognoloni
Elektro-Eckardt” is what it says above the large shop window in Bahnhofstrasse, Apolda, Thuringia. The nameplate is a reminiscence of a shop that is now long gone. The owner, who appreciated art, let it to artists Annette and Gerd Wandrer as a gallery and studio. A few years ago, the two of them moved from Berlin to the former centre of the knitting industry, from the big city to the provinces. The shop is the ideal location to work close together. It provides them both with inspiration and creates opportunities for an artistic interchange. Their works demonstrate how fruitful this cooperation is. Coloured woodcuts by Gerd Wandrer adorn the surfaces of the usually large vessels. Annette Wandrer has mastered the technique of placing printed images in a new context. To achieve this, she needed a period of intensive experimentation and patience. Step by step she has found her way forward into this field of fine art. The image technique permits her to move into space from a two-dimensional plane and to lend the decor a narrative element. Figural work is the result of a lengthy journey from the ornamental to the narrative image. Every piece is unmistakable and unique.
(Doris Weilandt)
Annette Wandrer
Many things from history remain hidden to us. From today’s perspective, how people treated each other and the very local customs are often still a secret.
Museums of art history in Europe are full of ceramic shards, the remains of what life used to be like, and occasionally something familiar peers out from among them – a human figure.
A drawing provides evidence of the belief from Ancient Egypt that Khnum, the creator god, created the child Horus on a potter’s wheel and the goddess Isis gave it life by her touch.
Thus a small clay figure appears in the world of the gods (cf. Dorothea Arnold et al.: Meisterwerke altägyptischer Keramik. 5000 Jahre Kunst und Kunsthandwerk aus Ton und Fayence. Förderkreis Westerwald für Kunst und Keramik, Montabaur 1978, ISBN 978-3-921548-06-6).
The concrete reference of the figurines comes from Rome, where skilled potters made small human images many centuries ago. These were used for a specific tradition in the families of ancient Rome, which consisted in having a family altar. This may simply have been a niche in the wall or a larger installation, depending on social standing. Besides figures of the gods, what is known as lares were also found there, small clay figures symbolically representing deceased family members.
Astrid Zwick
Anything she touches comes to life. Even as a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Margit Denz knew that working with clay would be fascinating and it did not take long until her journey took her first to train in sculpture in Innsbruck and then in 1984 to the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
In her hands, whole continents emerge, once seemingly sunken, inhabited by strange, enchanting beings that have had their peculiar lives fired into them. Denz does not fear the profound monstrosity of her figures and forms, which are able to turn everything upside down – and quite clearly the 58-year-old artist collects her ideas on land just as she does under water. She gets to the bottom of things and in her own very individual way she takes up legends, Greek myths or biblical texts, interpreting them after the pleasurable principle of joie de vivre. The tentacled creatures from the exhibition Gorgon and Animon, for instance, seem to be running around as soon as you look away – but they remain frozen in their octopoid motion as soon as you look back again. Even that is not for certain and you catch yourself checking up to make sure they are really standing in the same place. That is what happens with Margit Denz’s sculptures – you are never quite sure if you have a ceramic figure before you or a cunning and very lively impish creature that is playing games with you.
(Daniela Egger)
Margit Denz
Becoming a professional ceramist was neither something that ran in Susan Heise’s family, nor was it something she always desired, to one day be involved with making wheel thrown vessels. It may not originally have been her calling but the ramifications of her life’s journey nevertheless led her over time into a profession carefully chosen and much loved. With her specialisation on wheel thrown porcelain vessels, she is part of a contemporary trend and yet with her individual pieces and tableware, at the same time she stands out from the crowd. Over the years she has developed a highly individual ceramic idiom and with patience and stamina has nurtured her material and theme to make them unmistakable.
Born in 1974 in the GDR, in Greifswald, she wanted to get her school leaving certificate in evening classes, then she could have become a qualified chef at the same time, and maybe even a manager in one of the state Interhotels after university. But the course of world history intervened in an individual life in East Germany and the course of further education she had embarked upon was suddenly cut off with the disappearance of the GDR.
(Walter Lokau)
Susan Heise
Space for all colours in the exhibition Colour at Keramiekmuseum Tegelen, on show until
25 September 2022
Keramiekcentrum Tiendschuur Tegelen,
Kasteellaan 8, 5932 AG Tegelen, The Netherlands
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Countless shades of blue incorporated in refined patterns are characteristic of the work of the English artist Peter Beard. He has developed a batik technique for ceramics. Here, he works with several layers of glaze on top of each other and, in between them, he makes beautiful drawings with wax that locally allow the underlying glaze to emerge again. The result is intriguing and organic patterns in every imaginable shade of blue, from the fresh light blue on a bright wintry day to the typically tropical azure blue or a deep cornflower blue.
Intense blue can also be found in the work by Wouter Dam. His “skins” are not fanciful like Peter Beard’s, but smooth and soft. This well-known Dutch ceramicist always chooses one colour and sprays it on this work in the form of vitreous engobe, a layer of clay that remains matt. The engobe creates wonderful velvety skins.
The work of Maria Woydat (GB) is also beautifully matt and monochrome, although not completely monochrome. Maria gives each form or side of a form one colour but after that she orders and classifies the differently coloured objects. She plays with them the way you can arrange the colours in a colour box. Like a stylist, she looks for colour groups with colour cards. The result: beautiful, subtle installations.
Liesbeth Kamp (NL)
Contemporary German ceramics at Galerie Marianne Heller, Heidelberg
Origin is destiny – in ceramics too. Handed-down techniques and preferences remain noticeable over time. The new exhibition at Heidelberg’s Galerie Marianne Heller with works by seventeen German ceramists makes this clear. Divided equally into East and West, it reveals evidence of inner-German separation in ceramic aesthetics. The resource-rich ceramics of West Germany was obsessed with flawless craftsmanship and technological excellence: vessels made of stoneware, porcelain and exquisite glazes all became obligatory, flawlessness, noble unity of form and glaze was de rigeur, superiority in craftsmanship and technology was the style. The art ceramics of East Germany, materially less blessed, cultivated an aesthetic of the low-fired, indulged in a material-focused expressionistic freedom of the vessel: earthen quality became personal expression. Burg Giebichenstein with its teacher Gertraud Möhwald was defining. Not everything is covered by this contrast, but a lot.
( Walter Lokau)
Renée Reichenbach
Stéphanie Baechler (Switzerland)
In 2012, while in her master’s programme, Stéphanie Baechler encountered ceramics for the first time, as she was searching for elements to go with her course in fashion design. She said, “It was a key moment in my career.” In the same year, as she became an artist-in-residence at EKWC, she found that she was attracted by art more than by fashion design, and that she preferred clay to pins.
Wu Wei-cheng (Taiwan)
Wu Wei-cheng (born 1976) found his connection with tea early in his childhood thanks to his tea-farming relatives. His first encounter with ceramics is marked by making tea sets. Majoring in commercial design, Wu has been deeply interested in architecture and interior design. In 2007, he took lessons in tea ceremonies. In about 2017, he began to introduce the concept of architecture into tea ceremonies by constructing/deconstructing works with iron wires as his medium to deal with spatial mass and the expansion or deployment of boundaries.
(Ting-Ju SHAO)
Stéphanie Baechler
Wu Wei-cheng
Paula, you were fascinated by porcelain very early on in your professional training. Would you tell us a bit about your biography and how you came to work with porcelain?
During my studies at the Royal Academy of Art and Design (NL) I visited the Princessenhof, a ceramics museum in Leeuwarden (NL). While viewing a tiny Chinese bowl, I experienced an astonishingly breathtaking feeling. That specific moment determined the rest of my life, and my passion for porcelain.
Porcelain is something you have to get used to because it’s a very difficult material to work with. Did you know right away: this is it?
Yes, from that moment at that exhibition it was completely clear that I wanted to work with porcelain. The beauty, the transparency, the refinement, the movement, the rhythm and the strength. I knew this is it and I knew I wanted to translate all these elements into my own work.
(Evelyne Schoenmann)
Paula Bastiaansen
