Sound of the Earth – Ceramics in Contemporary Art

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.