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Sound of the Earth – Ceramics in Contemporary Art

Kunstmuseum

Intro

SOUND OF THE EARTH / CERAM­ICS IN CON­TEM­POR­ARY ART

The in­ter­na­tion­al group ex­hib­i­tion on ceram­ics in con­tem­por­ary art is the first ex­hib­i­tion in Switzer­land to ex­plore cur­rent ap­proaches to this me­di­um. It fo­cuses on artists for whom ceram­ics have be­come a core ele­ment of their prac­tice, wheth­er as the sole me­di­um or in par­al­lel with paint­ing, sculp­ture or other media. The ex­hib­i­tion brings to­geth­er works that ex­per­i­ment with the sculp­tur­al po­ten­tial of ceram­ics, blur­ring the bound­ar­ies between high art and craft.

Room 1

Martin Chramosta, Riverdance, 2022, Courtesy the artist, photo: Martin Chramosta

Martin Chramosta, Riverdance, 2022, Courtesy the artist, photo: Martin Chramosta

Traces of the Past / Ar­chi­tec­ture of the Present

The works shown here are re­min­is­cent of past cul­tures and ar­chae­olo­gic­al finds and re­late to the legib­il­ity of land­scapes and their form­a­tions. The room in­vites vis­it­ors to re­flect on how people in­ter­act with the earth and the re­mains of past civil­isa­tions and how these in­ter­ac­tions can be cap­tured in the form of works of art. The use of ceram­ics as an artist­ic ma­ter­i­al raises ques­tions about the con­tinu­ity and fra­gil­ity of human his­tory and cul­ture in dif­fer­ent ways and re­flects on the mean­ing of ar­chi­tec­ture, power and ritu­al in the past and present.

Isa Melsheimer is known for her works that often com­bine ar­chi­tec­tur­al ele­ments with a par­tic­u­lar sens­it­iv­ity for ma­ter­i­al­ity and form. The themes of nature and land­scape are other as­pects of Melsheimer­’s re­flec­tion on hu­man­ity’s sur­viv­al, in­clud­ing its re­la­tion­ship to the en­vir­on­ment and sus­tain­ab­il­ity. In many works she com­bines sources from the nat­ur­al world with ex­amples from the built en­vir­on­ment, equally im­port­ant as the fun­da­ment­als of human ex­ist­ence. The sculp­tures from the Hoch­haus series refer to urban land­scapes and the to­po­graphy shaped by people. De­part­ing in scale, ma­ter­i­al and col­our from their sources, they are closer in spir­it to or­gan­ic struc­tures than to the elong­ated high rise build­ings.

Shah­pour Pouyan’s tech­nic­al vir­tu­os­ity is the res­ult of ex­tens­ive ex­per­i­ment­a­tion with and re­search into ma­ter­i­al, form and col­our in the ceram­ic me­di­um. He fuses his­tor­ic­al and con­tem­por­ary tech­niques that are in­spired, for ex­ample, by meth­ods and styles in 12th cen­tury Kashan, Iran. The fig­ures of Han­ni­bal, the Carthagini­an gen­er­al and Xer­xes, the Per­sian ruler be­long to a group of ter­ra­cotta pieces de­pict­ing well-known fig­ures from his­tory whose repu­ta­tions are shrouded in mys­tery. Pouyan jux­ta­poses the fra­gile nature of the ma­ter­i­al with the themes of power and his­tory, with ar­chae­ology play­ing a role in his work as a kind of ‘lay­er of the past’.

Mar­tin Chra­mo­sta also ex­plores the pos­sib­il­it­ies of the ma­ter­i­al using tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern tech­niques and cre­ates works that may re­call bio­morph­ic sculp­tures, while Car­oline Achain­tre’s mask-like ceram­ics are re­min­is­cent of Afric­an and pre­his­tor­ic art as well as ritu­al rep­res­ent­a­tions. Their sym­bol­ism refers to cus­toms and ce­re­mo­ni­al prac­tices of past or present cul­tures that are deeply rooted in human his­tory and hint at ar­chae­olo­gic­al sig­ni­fic­ance.

Room 2

Isa Melsheimer, false ruins and lost innocence 3 (Detail), 2020, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul, photo © Andrea Rossetti

Isa Melsheimer, false ruins and lost innocence 3 (Detail), 2020, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul, photo © Andrea Rossetti

Ar­chi­tec­ture and Sym­bol­ism

The works presen­ted in this room ex­plore the re­la­tion­ship between ar­chi­tec­ture, sym­bol­ism and phys­ic­al­ity. The artists ex­plore the idea that ar­chi­tec­ture is more than just a func-tion­al build­ing – it can also carry cul- tural, emo­tion­al or aes­thet­ic mean­ings.

Glazed ceram­ics are the main me­di­um for Isa Melsheimer­’s ex­plor­a­tion of the min­im­al­ist styles of Mod­ern­ism as well as con­crete ar­chi­tec­ture from the 1950s to ‘70s. In her model-like sculp­tures she com­bines re­search in-to the uto­pi­an ideals of fig­ure­heads such as Le Cor­busier and Mies van der Rohe with a spir­it of fantasy and play­ful­ness. The wood, glass and con­crete of her sources re­main in­her­ent in Melsheimer­’s trans­la­tion into ceram­ic, as though, by re­turn­ing re­peatedly to the fun­da­ment­als, she ex­tracts their es­sence. The themes of nature and land­scape are other as­pects of Melsheimer­’s re­flec­tion on hu­man­ity’s sur­viv­al, in­clud­ing its re­la­tion­ship to the en­vir­on­ment and sus­tain­ab­il­ity. In many works she com­bines sources from the nat­ur­al world with ex­amples from the built en­vir­on­ment, equally im­port­ant as the fun­da­ment­als of human ex­ist­ence. The severe planes of the works false ruins and lost in­no­cence 3 (2020) are oc­cu­pied by a (once in­no­cent) horse’s head, de­pict­ing both an ar­chae­olo­gic­al in­vest­ig­a­tion into for­got­ten build­ings and the stage set for an apo­ca­lyptic theatre pro­duc­tion.

Clare Good­win’s or­na­ment­al ceram­ic wall piece may evoke clas­sic­al archi-tec­tur­al or­na­ment­a­tion, but it also raises ques­tions about the mean­ing of or­na­ment and its role in ar­chi­tec­ture as a car­ri­er of cul­tur­al mean­ings and so­cial sym­bols. Since 2018 the artist has been de­vel­op­ing a series of wall-based ceram­ics as an ex­ten­sion of her paint­ing prac­tice. The dis­tinct visu­al lan­guage of her ab­stract paint­ings – geo­met­ric­ally pre­cise, hard-edge com­pos­i­tions, re­duced to line, form and col­our – in­forms her in­creas­ingly am­bi­tious ex­per­i­ments in hand-built ceram­ics. In­spired for many years by in­teri­or design and fash­ion his­tory of the 1970s and ‘80s, in her ceram­ic work Good­win makes ref­er­ence to the ma­ter­i­al qual­it­ies, pat­terns and col­our com­bin­a­tions of found ceram­ic ob­jects, in­ter­ested primar­ily in the ima­gined narra-tives and socio-polit­ic­al con­texts that these con­tain.

Mar­tin Chra­mo­sta ex­plores the idea that ar­chi­tec­ture not only shapes the human en­vir­on­ment, but also re­flects human ex­ist­ence. In the Col­loc [Co-in­hab­it­ants] (2023) series, he takes up design, sym­bol­ic or func­tion­al ele­ments that he finds in ar­chi­tec­tur­al struc­tures in urban space. He cop­ies, isol­ates and con­denses the signs he finds and draws at­ten­tion to the mean­ing of their sym­bol­ism. His works often play with a so­cial­ist aes­thet­ic and with the aware­ness that ar­chi­tec­ture is also a vehicle for polit­ic­al state­ments.

Room 3

Shahpour Pouyan, Untitled, 2019, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris / Bruxelles, photo: Bertrand Huet / tutti image

Shahpour Pouyan, Untitled, 2019, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris / Bruxelles, photo: Bertrand Huet / tutti image

Ar­chi­tec­ture and Iden­tity

In these works, ceram­ics are used as a me­di­um to de­vel­op uto­pi­an ar­chi­tec­tur­al con­cepts and sym­bol­ic rep­res­ent­a­tions of power, iden­tity and memory. Ar­chi­tec­tur­al forms are re­in­ter­preted and linked with cul­tur­al, so­cial and ideo­lo­gic­al ques­tions.

Shah­pour Pouyan’s ceram­ic sculp­tures com­bine in­tel­lec­tu­al depth with me­tic­u­lous crafts­man­ship and the ex­pres­sion of ideas in a suc­cinct and po­et­ic visu­al lan­guage. He re­searches his­tory, polit­ics and con­tem­por­ary events, fo­cus­sing in par­tic­u­lar on the theme of power – wheth­er mil­it­ary, polit­ic­al, or re­li­gious – and the traces of col­lect­ive and in­di­vidu­al memory that ob­jects and monu­ments pos­sess. The series Un­titled (2019; 2021) con­tin­ues an earli­er in­stall­a­tion of towers, domes, roofs and min­arets that rep­res­ent royal palaces and mosques in the same mini­ature scale and earthly ma­ter­i­al. Pouyan was in­spired to make the work after tak­ing a DNA test in 2014 that re­vealed an an­ces­try stretch­ing far bey­ond Iran to 33 coun­tries. The ar­chi­tec­ture of each one is rep­res­en­ted by a roof struc­ture dis­tinct­ive to the loc­ale, map­ping the artist’s iden­tity whilst mak­ing a subtle ar­gu­ment against na­tion­al­ism and race. The ‘monu­ment­s’ in Un­titled are also a syn­thes­is of real Ir­a­ni­an ar­chi­tec­tur­al ex­amples and the artist’s own ima­gined con­struc­tions of towers.

Nicole Cher­ubini uses ceram­ics to re­in­ter­pret clas­sic­al forms and cre­ate al­tern­at­ive, sub­vers­ive ar­chi­tec­tures. In her work Lethykos Am­phora (2007), she breaks with tra­di­tion­al am­phora forms and in­tro­duces an or­gan­ic, chaot­ic aes­thet­ic that fo­cuses on the ex­press­ive power of sym­bols and forms.

Mar­tin Chra­mo­sta’s works are char-ac­ter­ised by a bal­ance between form and func­tion. The works FUR and Cac­cia (both 2022) are re­min­is­cent of mech­an­ic­al struc­tures and at the same time take up an an­tique visu­al lan­guage, sym­bol­ising the decay and change of ar­chi­tec­tur­al con­struc­tions that shape our en­vir­on­ment.

Room 4

Nicole Cherubini, Vanitas #6, 2007, Courtesy of Nicole Cherubini and Friedman Benda

Nicole Cherubini, Vanitas #6, 2007, Courtesy of Nicole Cherubini and Friedman Benda

Fra­gile Monu­ments

The works in the fourth ex­hib­i­tion room take a sub­vers­ive ap­proach to the tra­di­tion­al func­tions of monu­ments. Ceram­ics, a ma­ter­i­al with a long his­tory, is used to de­con­struct these monu­ments and, with its fra­gile ma­ter­i­al, to ex­am­ine the dis­pro­por­tions of cul­tur­al sym­bols.

While Mai-Thu Per­ret’s prac­tice en­com­passes sculp­ture, paint­ing, draw-ing, per­form­ance and sitespe­cif­ic in­stall­a­tion, ceram­ics are a key as­pect of an artist­ic cos­mos formed by
ma­ter­i­al re­la­tion­ships, cul­tur­al refer-ences and fem­in­ist nar­rat­ives. Her ex­per­i­ment­a­tion with a wide range of tech­niques, as well as ap­proaches to col­our and tex­ture have res­ul­ted in ceram­ic ob­jects of widely vary­ing scale, con­cep­tu­al nature and sub­ject mat­ter. Min­erva I (2022) is based on a di­git­al scan of an an­cient statue of the Greek god­dess of wis­dom, war and the arts. It is, how­ever, a homage to Car­o­lina (1869–1959), a count­ess from Ti­cino and wife of Emilio Maraini. Al­though they to­geth­er de­signed the villa now home to the Isti­tuto Svizzero in Rome as a so­cial pro­ject, few traces of her re­main in either the noble res­id­ence or in his­tory.

Nicole Cher­ubini uses ceram­ics as a ma­ter­i­al to ques­tion old tra­di­tions of art his­tory. She refers to the concept of ‘van­itas’, which was fre­quently used in paint­ing, es­pe­cially in the Baroque peri­od, to de­pict the tran-si­ence of life and ma­ter­i­al wealth. In Cher­ubin­i’s work, this theme is re­in­ter­preted through her ceram­ic sculp­tures. She uses the tra­di­tion­al form of van­itas rep­res­ent­a­tion to them­at­ise de­struc­tion, decay and the play with memory. The works ap­pear brittle, fra­gile and some­times over­sized, al­lud­ing to the fra­gil­ity of human ex­ist­ence and the lim­ited tem­por­al sig­ni­fic­ance of monu­ments. Am­phora Hy­dria (2007) is a mix­ture of tra­di­tion­al forms of an­cient jugs and mod­ern, ex­per­i­ment­al ele­ments. The am­phora, a clas­sic sym­bol of cul­ture and memory, is shown here in a dis­tor­ted, broken form that makes a sub­vers­ive com­ment on the idea of monu­ments and their last­ing sig­ni­fic­ance.

Room 5

Paloma Proudfoot, Gardening (Detail), 2024, Sammlung Stadler, Courtesy the artist and Soy Capitan, photo: Nicolas Brasseur

Paloma Proudfoot, Gardening (Detail), 2024, Sammlung Stadler, Courtesy the artist and Soy Capitan, photo: Nicolas Brasseur

Vul­ner­able bod­ies, strong bod­ies

In this room, the artists ex­plore the de­pic­tion of the human body, its vul­ner­ab­il­ity and the lim­its of the human in dif­fer­ent ways. With nu­mer­ous ref­er­ences to art his­tory and pop­u­lar cul­ture, they ex­plore the re­la­tion­ship between the body and the sub­con­scious.

Pa­loma Proud­foot works with­in a vari­ety of media, in­clud­ing sculp­ture, tex­tiles, text and per­form­ance, draw-ing to­geth­er per­son­al nar­rat­ives, his­tor­ic­al re­search and con­tem­por­ary ref­er­ences. In­formed by her back-ground in dress-mak­ing, her ap-proach to pro­du­cing wall-moun­ted friezes is based on the pro­cess of flat pat­tern-cut­ting. Proud­foot trans­lates her ideas for groups of fig­ures in paper tem­plates be­fore real­ising the work in glazed ceram­ic, glass, metal and tex­tiles. The res­ult­ing tableaux re­call nu­mer­ous sources, from Frida Kahlo’s im­ages of her own broken and sewn to­geth­er body, via the fantasy played out in lit­er­at­ure or film of un­sus­pect­ing vic­tims turned into stone, to the re­la­tion­ship between the human body and its ar­ti­fi­cial double, from med­ic­al ana­tom­ic­al mod­els to shop win­dow man­nequins. Al­though the or­nate in­stall­a­tions are se­duct­ive and the glazes cre­ated in ex­quis­ite tones that shim­mer and com­bine, they ex­pose the lim­its and vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies of the human, par­tic­u­larly fe­male body. The fig­ures in Garden­ing (2024) con­vey the con­nec­tion between the body and the un­con­scious: cloth and skin merge in the fit­ting of cor­set-like clothes, ar­range­ment of hair or the dress ironed whilst worn by a fe­male fig­ure perched on a table.

Car­oline Achaintre works in vari­ous media such as tapestry, draw­ing and ceram­ics. She trans­fers tra­di­tion­al tech­niques into the present and ex­plores the bound­ar­ies between ab-strac­tion and fig­ur­a­tion. Geo­met­ric, mask-like shapes and won­drous, an­im­al-like fig­ures ap­pear in her ceram­ics, chal­len­ging our usual per­cep­tions and shift­ing clas­sic­al at­tri­bu­tions. Achain­tre’s sources of in­spir­a­tion are im­ages from high and pop­u­lar cul-ture. In ad­di­tion to art his­tor­ic­al ref­er­ences such as prim­it­iv­ism and the Arts and Crafts move­ment, the genres of hor­ror, heavy metal and sci­ence fic­tion are just as im­port­ant to her as the sub­vers­ive spir­it of Cent­ral European car­ni­val and Shrovetide cus­toms. Achain­tre’s work is char­ac-ter­ised by the lively, col­our­ful and hu­mor­ous as well as the ar­cha­ic, dark and mys­ter­i­ous. Some ceram­ics ap­pear grot­esque due to their in­cisions in the clay and can sug­gest vi­ol­ence and vul­ner­ab­il­ity. How­ever, these vi­ol­ent ele­ments are never overtly con­front­a­tion­al, but subtle and enig-matic, which makes the works all the more in­tense and multi-layered.

Room 6

Edmund de Waal, gifts and | hindered words, 2022, © Edmund de Waal, courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London | Marfa, Photo: def image

Edmund de Waal, gifts and | hindered words, 2022, © Edmund de Waal, courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London | Marfa, Photo: def image

Geo­metry and Po­etry

These works have a strict geo­metry in com­mon, but they open up a po­et­ic di­men­sion through their lyr­ic­al titles. They il­lu­min­ate the fra­gile yet power­ful re­la­tion­ships between nature, cul­ture and human ex­per­i­ence.

Ed­mund de Waal cre­ates small, unique ceram­ic ves­sels that he com­poses in wall-moun­ted and freest­and­ing vit­rines. Com­bin­ing skills with ceram­ics ac­quired early in his ca­reer in Japan with a pro­found know­ledge of his­tory and cul­ture, de Waal re­sponds in his lyr­ic­al ceram­ic in­stall­a­tions to col­lec­tions, archives or the his­tory of a spe­cif­ic place. Often in­spired by a line of po­etry, a piece of music or an idea, his del­ic­ate min­im­al­ist ceram­ics fre­quently al­lude to memor­ies, human con­nec­tions, or the re­la­tion­ship between tra­di­tion and mod­ern­ity.

The title The Withered Tree Flowers in a Spring Bey­ond Time II (2021) evokes a mix­ture of tran­si­ence and re­new­ing power, with ‘with­er­ing’ al­lud­ing to death or decay, while the ‘S­pring Bey­ond Time’ im­plies an oth­er­worldly, supra­tem­por­al dimen-sion. In this work, Mai-Thu Per­ret deals with the cycles of nature, re­birth and memory, so the ref­er­ence to a tree bear­ing blos­soms of­fers an image of both de­struc­tion and re­new­al. Art his­tor­ic­al pre­ced­ents and their cul­tur­al con­texts in­form works such as Color it red or blue still you can’t paint (2016), a white geo­met­ric piece that echoes Soph­ie Taeuber-Arp’s vis­ion­ary de­vel­op­ment of ab­strac­tion across art, design and ar­chi­tec­ture.

Room 7

Mai-Thu Perret, Like a person’s hand in the middle of the night searching behind for the pillow, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich, photo: Mareike Tocha

Mai-Thu Perret, Like a person’s hand in the middle of the night searching behind for the pillow, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich, photo: Mareike Tocha

Nature and Po­etry

People, an­im­als and plants form the frame of ref­er­ence for the works, which are ori­ent­ated to­wards or­gan­ic forms, but also to­wards an ab­stract vocab­u­lary. Fur­ther­more, both artists open up an ad­di­tion­al level of mean­ing with the titles of their works.

Car­men D’A­pol­lo­nio’s prac­tice is fo­cused al­most ex­clus­ively on the me­di­um of ceram­ic (oc­ca­sion­ally pro­du­cing pieces in bronze), which she uses to cre­ate sculp­tur­al light­ing. Fus­ing the artist­ic with func­tion­al­ity, she also ex­per­i­ments in these pieces with the re­la­tion­ship between ab­strac­tion and fig­ur­a­tion. At the heart of her work is the human body, which she de­picts in sim­pli­fied, or­gan­ic forms, in­flu­enced by clas­sic­al mod­ern­ist artists such as Jean Arp or Diego Gi­ac­ometti. Nature and ar­chi­tec­tur­al spaces are also im­port­ant visu­al ref­er­ences for her lamps and ves­sels (such as There is no way out (2023)). D’A­pol­lo­nio’s artist­ic pro­cess starts with sketches, which she then trans­lates into clay, de­vel­op­ing the ob­ject in­tu­it­ively and or­gan­ic­ally. The titles of her work, ran­ging from the comic to the mel­an­chol­ic, evoke pos­sible nar­rat­ives for her sug­gest­ive, open-ended com­pos­i­tions.

Mai-Thu Per­ret’s focus on al­tern­at­ive per­spect­ives in­cludes a fem­in­ist ap­proach to the for­got­ten stor­ies of women and the in­ter­ac­tions between the human, plant and an­im­al worlds. Forms re­min­is­cent of a leaf, an an­im­al head, or lily pads, as in The mer­ging of all into one – this can­not be grasped (2020), are cre­ated as re­liefs from glazes made in del­ic­ate tones, with the pre­cise work­ing of clay lead­ing to in­tim­ate ges­tures.

Room 8

Caroline Achaintre, Krazzt, 2022, Courtesy the artist & Von Bartha & Art:Concept, photo: Annabel Elston

Caroline Achaintre, Krazzt, 2022, Courtesy the artist & Von Bartha & Art:Concept, photo: Annabel Elston

Ab­strac­tion and Fig­ur­a­tion

The works in this room bear wit­ness to the artist­s’ in­tens­ive ex­plor­a­tion of form and ma­ter­i­al, tex­ture and col­our. Here, too, there are strong ref­er­ences to nature, which are placed in a re­la­tion­ship to people. Above all, how­ever, the con­nec­tion between ceram­ics and the me­di­um of paint­ing and the in­ter­twin­ing of ab­strac­tion and fig­ur­a­tion take centre stage.

Car­oline Achaintre moulds the clay by hand and cre­ates sur­faces that are char­ac­ter­ised by their struc­tures and tex­tures. She adds glazed and un­glazed areas to these to cre­ate dif­fer­ent visu­al and tact­ile im­pres-sions. The artist util­ises the mate-ri­al­ity of clay to cre­ate sculp­tures that ap­pear both or­gan­ic and ges­tur­al. She trans­forms these ab­stract forms into fant­ast­ic, some­times men­acing-look­ing creatures. Her ceram­ics, such as Krazzt (2022), show grot­esque and mask-like faces that com­bine human, an­im­al and plant fea­tures. These fig­ures ap­pear fa­mil­i­ar and alien at the same time, which cre­ates an un­canny ten­sion.

Isa Melsheimer­’s Snake Grass VI and VII (2024) are based on nature, but dif­fer in scale, ma­ter­i­al and col­our from the ori­gin­al in­spir­a­tion. The plant ap­pears dy­nam­ic, as if it were in mo­tion. The col­ours chosen for the glaz­ing of the ceram­ic re­in­force the im­pres­sion of the fant­ast­ic, while the white areas in com­bin­a­tion with the blur­ring of the col­our em­phas­ise the joints of the stems. With the large-format glazed ceram­ic, the artist refers to snake grass (Equis­etum hye­male), an in­vas­ive and ag­gress­ive or­na­ment­al plant that, when left in the wild, be­comes a ser­i­ous threat to the nat­ive flora due to its rapid pro­lif­er­a­tion. The work en­cour­ages re­flec­tion on human in­ter­ven­tion in nature and con­veys the idea of a threat em­an­at­ing from nature it­self.

Mai-Thu Per­ret’s works From the leaves of the san­dal­wood tree a fra­grant wind rises (2020) and Right now, fun­da­ment­ally there is not one thing (2020) not only bring ar­cha­ic sym­bol­ism and fig­ur­a­tion into a dia­logue, but also il­lus­trate ap­proaches to form­al ab­strac­tion that point to an on­go­ing ex­plor­a­tion of the me­di­um of paint­ing and the po­ten­tial of paint­erly trans­form­a­tion. Based on the val­or­isa­tion of arts and crafts and or­na­ment­a­tion in the avant-garde move­ments of the 20th cen­tury, Per­ret pur­sues an artist­ic prac­tice in which ceram­ics are no longer just a part of do­mest­ic dec­or­a­tion, but an im­port­ant ex­pres­sion of a fem­in­ist per­spect­ive that turns against the male-dom­in­ated art his­tory of the West and shows pos­sib­il­it­ies of form­al eman­cip­a­tion.

Room 9

Woody De Othello, A Hope for a Prayer, 2020, private collection, © Woody De Othello, courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, and Karma, photo: John Wilson White

Woody De Othello, A Hope for a Prayer, 2020, private collection, © Woody De Othello, courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, and Karma, photo: John Wilson White

Every­day ob­jects with souls

The works de­scribed ad­dress, in dif­fer­ent ways, the re­la­tion­ship between ob­ject and space, the emo­tion­al sig­ni­fic­ance of form and ma­ter­i­al, and the ex­pres­sion of in­tim­acy, con­tem­pla­tion and spir­itu­al­ity.

The wall-moun­ted com­pos­i­tions let­ters home, II and III (2024), made of black por­cel­ain ves­sels fin­ished in gold or sil­ver, can re­call re­pet­it­ive and rhythmic pat­terns cre­ated by mu­sic­al nota­tions, let­ters on a page, or the play of light and shad­ow on walls. The mono­chrome sculp­tures cre­ate a space for quiet con­tem­pla­tion and re­flec­tion. In let­ters home de Waal ex­am­ines his re­la­tion­ship to the idea of home. The mo­nu­ment­al freest­and­ing black stone­ware ves­sels ele­gie, II and IV (2023) and ele­gie VIII (2024) are in­scribed with text frag­ments in­spired by Rilke’s Duino Ele­gies. The in­di­vidu­al words and sen­tences, in con­nec­tion with the mys­ter­i­ous inner life of the clay ves­sels, en­hance the in­tim­acy of these sculp­tur­al ob­jects.

Clare Good­win cre­ates as­semblages in which she reg­u­larly in­teg­rates ceram­ics. She jux­ta­poses ele­ments of pre-owned fur­niture with the ceram­ic wall pieces and draws on the aes­thet­ics of the ven­eered wood in the col­ours and forms of these works. The ar­range­ments of geo­met­ric ele­ments such as rect­angles, lines, circles, dia­monds and squares, which play a cent­ral role in Good­win’s paint­ing, are also the main fea­tures of her ceram­ics. These are based on small ab­stract wa­ter­col­our paint­ings and demon­strate her grow­ing in­terest in the sculp­tur­al prop­er­ties of ob­jects and re­liefs that ex­tend into real space. She her­self de­scribes these three-di­men­sion­al re­liefs as ‘still­s­capes’, which serve as both in­tim­ate, so­cial and con­cep­tu­al spaces.

Woody De Oth­ello cre­ates multi-dis­cip­lin­ary works that in­clude sculp­ture, paint­ing and draw­ing. He works primar­ily with glazed ceram­ics, trans­form­ing every­day ob­jects into fig­ur­at­ive and ca­ri­ca­tur­al forms, but also an­thro­po­morph­ic and an­im­ist­ic ones. His often brightly col­oured com­pos­ite sculp­tures ap­pear to be an­im­ate, sen­tient ob­jects. In Hope for a Pray­er (2020), two arms arch out in a wide arc in a pray­ing ges­ture, fixed on a stool. The work em­bod­ies an emo­tion­al state that could be in­ter­preted as long­ing, hope, fa­tigue, resig­na­tion or even pride. De Oth­ello re­peatedly draws in­spir­a­tion from dif­fer­ent be­lief sys­tems that as­sume that ob­jects pos­sess a cer­tain spir­itu­al es­sence.

Room 10

Lindsey Mendick, Over My Dead Body, 2024, Courtesy of Carl Freedman Gallery & Lindsey Mendick, photo: Ollie Harrop

Lindsey Mendick, Over My Dead Body, 2024, Courtesy of Carl Freedman Gallery & Lindsey Mendick, photo: Ollie Harrop

Do­mest­icity and Decay

This room il­lu­min­ates the ten­sion between do­mest­icity on the one hand and the idea of decay and de­com­pos­i­tion on the other. Ceram­ics as a ma­ter­i­al tra­di­tion­ally as­so­ci­ated with the ar­tis­an­al and dec­or­at­ive is un­der­mined by pictori­al in­ven­tions that are less ‘beau­ti­fy­ing’ than con­front­ing or dis­turb­ing and break up the im­pres­sion of do­mest­ic order. The room is not only staged as a place of se­cur­ity, but also as a place of de­struc­tion and con­stant change, in which fa­mil­i­ar but charged sym­bols are scru­tin­ised and trans­formed.

Lind­sey Men­dick works pre­domi-nantly with ceram­ics, sub­vert­ing its tra­di­tion­al as­so­ci­ations with dec­or­a­tion and the do­mest­ic to cre­ate monu­ments to ‘low cul­ture’ and the con­tem­por­ary fe­male ex­per­i­ence. Her auto­bi­o­graph­ic­al work chal­lenges the male gaze, pro­mot­ing in­stead an un­com­prom­ising, hu­mor­ous and, at times, grot­esque fem­in­in­ity. Men­dick handles the clay in­tu­it­ively and phys­ic­ally, let­ting it slump and bulge in the pro­cess of form­ing ob­jects that re­flect every­day, or­din­ary ex­per­i­ences and banal sub­jects. She pro­duces the glazes her­self, re­gard­ing the pro­cess of siev­ing and mix­ing ox­ides and raw ma­ter­i­als as an in­teg­ral al­chem­ic­al pro­cess. Re­flect­ing with bru­tal hon­esty on the micro dra­mas in life and ex­plor­ing emo­tions that are often sup­pressed, she sub­jects the con­ven­tions of tra­di­tion­al ceram­ics to per­son­al anxi­et­ies, time­less myths and pop­u­lar cul­ture ref­er­ences. Or­nate glazed vases are ripped from with­in by hands or oc­topus tentacles and dishes writhe with snakes. Like an anxi­ety dream come to life, frogs with ci­gar­ettes stuffed in their mouths crawl over dis­carded beer cans and spiders creep out of hand­bags, from which spoilt food is also spill­ing out.

In Canʼt have it all (2024), Car­men D’A­pol­lo­nio ex­per­i­ments with ma­teri-ality and ges­tures. After fir­ing, she as­sembles small pieces into land­scape-like, sur­real sculp­tures. Her works ap­pear to have grown or­gan­ic­ally; even strange mush­rooms sprout from her sculp­tures like creatures from an alien plan­et. The mush­room as a motif has a long tra­di­tion in the his­tory of light­ing design, prob­ably be­cause of the ana­logy between lamp bases and lamp­shades and the shape of mush­rooms. The artist adds lamp-shades to her ob­jects, thus shift­ing the bound­ary between util­ity ob­ject and work of art.

Proud­foot plays with the view­er­’s ex­pect­a­tions of her ma­ter­i­als, the fili­gree out­line of Drink­ing in my eyes (VI) (2023) filled with a mesh pat­tern re­sem­bling fish scales and stud­ded with thorn­like spikes. The idea of nature as an un­stop­pable and un­pre­dict­able force comes into play and is jux­ta­posed with the vul­ner­ab­il­ity and im­per­fec­tion of human per­cep­tion. On the other hand, the prickly thorns could also in­dic­ate a kind of pro­tect­ive mech­an­ism or an ag­gress­ive de­fence against the con­ven­tion­al per­cep­tion of beauty and har­mony.

Room 11

Cristian Andersen, Paul (out of the series “winners and losers”), 2009, Courtesy the artist

Cristian Andersen, Paul (out of the series “winners and losers”), 2009, Courtesy the artist

Hu­mour and Abyss

Hu­mour is ex­plored here in its multi-layered mean­ing, which os­cil­lates between light­ness and heav­i­ness and raises so­cial and cul­tur­al ques­tions. The hu­mor­ous use of ma­ter­i­al­ity, form and sym­bol­ism is not only a play with the sur­face, but also a crit­ic­al ex­am­in­a­tion of the in­ter­faces between ‘high’ and pop­u­lar cul­ture. By com­bin­ing seem­ingly in­com­pat­ible ele-ments and cre­at­ing pre­cari­ous­ness and ab­surdity in the sculp­tures, the ser­i­ous but also sub­vers­ive char­ac­ter of hu­mour is treated as a cent­ral theme.

A key as­pect of Cris­ti­an An­der­sen’s artist­ic prac­tice is his on-going series of large, elab­or­ately cast ceram­ic sculp­tures that play­fully com­bine seem­ingly in­com­pat­ible char­ac­ter­ist­ics. Pre­fer­ring to use found ob­jects or ma­ter­i­als from the build­ing trade, the artist com­bines fig­ur­at­ively nar­rat­ive ele­ments, such as a ten­nis ball or dice, with forms cut from Sagex foam or poly­styrene, cast­ing these in a par­tially pig­men­ted, highly dense in­dus­tri­al fluid ceram­ic. Whilst the added pig­ments blur the dis­tinc­tion between the vari­ous ele­ments, the ori­gin­al ma­ter­i­al’s light and flimsy ap­pear­ance, as well as the traces of the for­got­ten and lost, are re­tained in the heavy, ab­stract struc­tures. Dis­played on plinths, the res­ult­ing ceram­ic pieces play with the lan­guage of mod­ern­ist in­teri­or ar­chi­tec­ture, re­call­ing pro­to­types for uto­pi­an build­ings. The res­ult­ing as­semblages ap­pear un­fin­ished and pre­cari­ous, their frag­ment­ary nature and soul­ful en­ergy en­com­passing the pos­sib­il­ity of being part of some­thing that was once whole. An­der­sen un­der­mines the weight of mean­ing of ab­stract sculp­tures by play­fully com­bin­ing in­com­pat­ible source ma­ter­i­als and forms. The works some­times al­most ap­pear as if they have ‘ac­ci­dent­ally’ taken on this form and con­stel­late into ob­jects that seem to have their own hu­mor­ous per­son­al­ity.

Here too, Car­men D’A­pol­lo­nio com­bines func­tion­al­ity with a whim­sic­al touch and a tongue-in-cheek sens­ib­il­ity. Her an­im­ated il­lu­min­ated sculp­tures seem some­how ex­hausted. Mi chiamo lamp (2023) hangs in­ertly up­side down, but at the same time its col­our­ful­ness ra­di­ates some­thing lively and vital. D’A­pol­lo­nio’s works in­ter­act play­fully with the audi­ence, en­ter­ing into a dia­logue with them and some­times with each other.

Woody De Oth­ello often cre­ates seem­ingly whim­sic­al com­pos­i­tions from house­hold and every­day ob­jects and hu­mor­ously col­lapses them into the me­di­um of ceram­ics as if they were made of a mov­ing ma­ter­i­al. Here, too, a sense of fa­tigue weighs on their form. On closer in­spec­tion, the num­bers on the clock face ap­pear to have been con­fused with the com­bin­a­tion of num­bers on the pad­lock, cre­at­ing a feel­ing of un­ease and con­fu­sion. The dis­or­i­ent­a­tion is fur­ther ex­pressed by the sym­bol­ism of the alarm clock, which calls for wak­ing up, in con­trast to the hands of the wrist­watch, which have frozen the mo­ment. By link­ing time passing and tor­por, De Oth­ello speaks of a mo­ment of both heightened polit­ic­al activ­ity and over­whelm­ing fa­tigue re­lated to the dy­nam­ics of the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment and the slow pace of change. The pad­lock, as­so­ci­ated with se­cur­ity, ex­clus­iv­ity and con­fine­ment, adds a sombre note to this con­text. Woody De Oth­el­lo’s sculp­tures have the un­set­tling qual­ity of jokes with ser­i­ous un­der­tones. His sense of hu­mour con­sists of mem­or­able visu­al puns, po­et­ic am­bi­gu­ity and his un­der­stand­ing of real­ity.

Biographies

CAR­OLINE ACHAINTRE (*1969, Toulouse, FR, lives in Lon­don, UK) works with ceram­ics, tapestry, draw­ing. She trans­poses tra­di­tion­al tech­niques into the present, ex­plor­ing the bound­ar­ies between the ab­stract and the rep­res­ent­a­tion­al.

CRIS­TI­AN AN­DER­SEN (*1974, DK, lives in Zurich, CH) works with large, com­plex moul­ded ceram­ic sculp­tures. In them, fig­ur­at­ive found ob­jects and post-min­im­al forms of in­dus­tri­al build­ing ma­ter­i­als are trans­formed into a new ma­ter­i­al unity.

NICOLE CHER­UBINI (*1970, Bo­ston, US, lives in Hud­son NY, US) works in the media of in­stall­a­tion, ceram­ics and mixed media. With her fra­gile and or­gan­ic ceram­ics, she ex­pands tra­di­tion­al forms into an in­de­pend­ent vocab­u­lary.

MAR­TIN CHRA­MO­STA (*1982, Zurich, CH, lives in Basel, CH and Vi­enna, AT) works in the media of ceram­ics, music, per­form­ance, text, video and draw­ing. In his ceram­ics, he ex­am­ines form­al and func­tion­al ele­ments of urban build­ing struc­tures.

CAR­MEN D’A­POL­LO­NIO (*1973, Zurich, CH, lives in Los Angeles, US) uses ceram­ics to cre­ate sculp­tur­al lamps. Her works are ori­ent­ated to­wards the human body and com­bine the artist­ic with the func­tion­al.

WOODY DE OTH­ELLO (*1991, Miami, US, lives in Oak­land, US) works in the media of ceram­ics, paint­ing, sculp­ture and draw­ing. He trans­forms every­day ob­jects into glazed ceram­ics and ex­pands them into sculp­tur­al, hu­mor­ous as­semblages.

ED­MUND DE WAAL (*1964, Not­ting­ham, UK, lives in Lon­don, UK) works in the media of in­stall­a­tion, ceram­ics and lit­er­at­ure. He finds a basis for his sculp­tur­al work in col­lect­ing and col­lec­tions of ob­jects and com­bines these with art his­tor­ic­al re­search and lit­er­at­ure.

CLARE GOOD­WIN (*1973, Birm­ing­ham, UK, lives in Zurich, CH) works in the media of paint­ing and ceram­ics. Her wall ceram­ics are closely linked to her paint­ing prac­tice. She is in­ter­ested in the role of or­na­ment in ar­chi­tec­ture as so­cial and cul­tur­al sym­bols.

ISA MELSHEIMER (*1968, Neuss, DE, lives in Ber­lin, DE) works in the media of in­stall­a­tion, ceram­ics, paint­ing, em­broid­ery and tex­tiles. In model-like sculp­tures made of glazed ceram­ics, she ex­plores the min­im­al­ist form­al lan­guage and uto­pi­an ideals of mod­ern­ism.

LIND­SEY MEN­DICK (*1987, Lon­don, UK, lives in Mar­gate, UK) works across the media of in­stall­a­tion, ceram­ics and sculp­ture. She sub­verts the as­so­ci­ations of ceram­ics with dec­or­a­tion and do­mest­icity, cre­at­ing monu­ments to low cul­ture and a con­tem­por­ary fe­male ex­per­i­ence.

MAI-THU PER­RET (*1976, Geneva, CH, lives in Geneva, CH) works in the media of in­stall­a­tion, ceram­ics, paint­ing, per­form­ance, sculp­ture, text and draw­ing. She cre­ates fem­in­ist nar­rat­ives and counter-nar­rat­ives that place the role of art ob­jects and their in­ter­pret­a­tion in a new light.

SHAH­POUR POUYAN (*1979, Is­fa­han, IR, lives in Lon­don, UK) works in the media of in­stall­a­tion, ceram­ics, paint­ing, sculp­ture and draw­ing. He ex­plores his­tory and cur­rent events, in par­tic­u­lar the re­la­tion­ship between mil­it­ary, polit­ic­al and re­li­gious power.

PA­LOMA PROUD­FOOT (*1992, Lon­don, UK, lives in Lon­don, UK) works in the media of ceram­ics, per­form­ance, sculp­ture, text, tex­tiles and draw­ing. In her ceram­ic works, she them­at­ises the bound­ar­ies and vul­ner­ab­il­ity of the human body.

Imprint

CUR­AT­ORS
Stefanie Gschwend & Fe­li­city Lunn, Fachbereichslei­t­er­in Gestal­tung & Kunst, Hoch­schule der Kün­ste Bern / Head of Art and Design Di­vi­sion, Bern Academy of the Arts

OR­GAN­ISA­TION
Re­gina Brül­isauer, Stefanie Gschwend, Luca Tarelli

EX­HIB­I­TION IN­STALL­A­TION
Chris­ti­an Hörler, Chris­ti­an Meier, Tomek Ro­gowiec, Ueli Alder, Bea Dörig, Raoul Doré, Fla­vio Hodel, Carina Kirsch, Elias Menzi, Luca Tarelli

ART EDU­CA­TION
Domenika Chandra

MU­SEUM AT­TEND­ANTS
Rita Do­bler, Domi­n­ique Franke, Mar­grit Gmünder, Ian Groll, Priska Hüsler, Bar­bara Met­zger, Heneisha Mor­ris, Madleina Ru­tishaus­er, Luca Tarelli, Petra Zinth

ED­IT­OR
Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell

TEXT
Stefanie Gschwend & Fe­li­city Lunn 

PROOFREAD­ING & TRANS­LA­TION
Car­men Eb­neter, Stefanie Gschwend, Katja Nau­mann

GRAPH­IC DESIGN
Data-Orbit / Michel Egger, St.Gal­len

AC­KNOW­LEDGE­MENTS
Car­oline Achaintre, Elif Akinci, Cris­ti­an An­der­sen, Aufdi Auf­der­mauer, An­dreas Brül­isauer, Mari­anne Burki, Se­basti­an Bürkner, Gio­vanni Car­mine, Nicole Cher­ubini, Mar­tin Chra­mo­sta, Collezione la Gaia, Car­men D’A­pol­lo­nio, Woody De Oth­ello, Ed­mund de Waal, Robert Dia­ment, Myri­am Ge­bert, Clare Good­win, Lena Guévry, Tom Gut, Mat­thi­as Hal­de­mann, Cora Hansen, Mi­chael Janssen, Christa Kamm, Matt Kirkum, Jan­nik Konle, Kun­sthaus Zug, Stephan Kunz, Leo Lencés, Fa­bi­enne Loosli, Fe­li­city Lunn, Geor­gia Lurie, Isa Melsheimer, Lind­sey Men­dick, Erica Mir­anda, Mai-Thu Per­ret, Se­basti­ano Por­tunato, Shah­pour Pouyan, Pa­loma Proud­foot, Emma Robertson, Tomek Ro­gowiec, Kacper Ro­zicki, Alex­is Sar­fati, Aleksandra Sign­er, Bar­bara Sign­er, Roman Sign­er, An­nette Stadler, Team Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­sthalle, Seraina von Laer, Karin Weg­müller, Peter Zi­m­mer­mann, allen Stif­tun­gen für Ihre sub­stanti­elle Un­ter­stützung und Ihr Ver­trauen.

Sound of the Earth – Ceramics in Contemporary Art
Kunstmuseum
Martin Chramosta, Riverdance, 2022, Courtesy the artist, photo: Martin Chramosta

Martin Chramosta, Riverdance, 2022, Courtesy the artist, photo: Martin Chramosta

Isa Melsheimer, false ruins and lost innocence 3 (Detail), 2020, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul, photo © Andrea Rossetti

Isa Melsheimer, false ruins and lost innocence 3 (Detail), 2020, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul, photo © Andrea Rossetti

Shahpour Pouyan, Untitled, 2019, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris / Bruxelles, photo: Bertrand Huet / tutti image

Shahpour Pouyan, Untitled, 2019, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris / Bruxelles, photo: Bertrand Huet / tutti image

Nicole Cherubini, Vanitas #6, 2007, Courtesy of Nicole Cherubini and Friedman Benda

Nicole Cherubini, Vanitas #6, 2007, Courtesy of Nicole Cherubini and Friedman Benda

Paloma Proudfoot, Gardening (Detail), 2024, Sammlung Stadler, Courtesy the artist and Soy Capitan, photo: Nicolas Brasseur

Paloma Proudfoot, Gardening (Detail), 2024, Sammlung Stadler, Courtesy the artist and Soy Capitan, photo: Nicolas Brasseur

Edmund de Waal, gifts and | hindered words, 2022, © Edmund de Waal, courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London | Marfa, Photo: def image

Edmund de Waal, gifts and | hindered words, 2022, © Edmund de Waal, courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London | Marfa, Photo: def image

Mai-Thu Perret, Like a person’s hand in the middle of the night searching behind for the pillow, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich, photo: Mareike Tocha

Mai-Thu Perret, Like a person’s hand in the middle of the night searching behind for the pillow, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich, photo: Mareike Tocha

Caroline Achaintre, Krazzt, 2022, Courtesy the artist & Von Bartha & Art:Concept, photo: Annabel Elston

Caroline Achaintre, Krazzt, 2022, Courtesy the artist & Von Bartha & Art:Concept, photo: Annabel Elston

Woody De Othello, A Hope for a Prayer, 2020, private collection, © Woody De Othello, courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, and Karma, photo: John Wilson White

Woody De Othello, A Hope for a Prayer, 2020, private collection, © Woody De Othello, courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, and Karma, photo: John Wilson White

Lindsey Mendick, Over My Dead Body, 2024, Courtesy of Carl Freedman Gallery & Lindsey Mendick, photo: Ollie Harrop

Lindsey Mendick, Over My Dead Body, 2024, Courtesy of Carl Freedman Gallery & Lindsey Mendick, photo: Ollie Harrop

Cristian Andersen, Paul (out of the series “winners and losers”), 2009, Courtesy the artist

Cristian Andersen, Paul (out of the series “winners and losers”), 2009, Courtesy the artist

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