ALL ABOUT THE VESSEL

Mit ALL ABOUT THE VESSEL eröffnet das keramische Highlight der Europäischen Kulturhauptstadt 2024
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die Ausstellungsreihe INTERNATIONAL CERAMICS EXHIBITIONS
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Kuratiert von Leonie Mir

One of Spain‘s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Miquel Barceló is known for his relief-like mixed-media paintings, expressive bronze sculptures and ceramics. An artistic nomad, his fascination with the natural world has inspired richly textured canvases that evoke the earthy materiality of Art Informel, as well as compositions that study the effects of light and the ever-changing colours of the sea. Always experimenting with non-traditional materials such as volcanic ash, food, seaweed, sediments and homemade pigments, his works carry the traces of the fierce energy that animates his creative process.

Across his practice, Edmund de Waal (b. 1964) addresses the visual poetry of collecting and archiving, among other subjects. Recognised as an exceptional ceramist, de Waal models small unique vessels that form the base of his installations. His carefully composed vitrines offer lyrical narrations that result in a subtle dialogue between tradition and modernity, minimalism and architectural structure. Punctuated by notions of repetition and rhythm, the works are informed by the artist’s passion for literature as well as music and meditative contemplation.

Kazunori Hamana draws upon the ancient traditions of Japanese ceramics while cultivating new, inventive techniques in shaping, glazing, coloring, and firing. He makes large and delicate vessels out of natural clay sourced from Shiga Prefecture in Japan. Inspired by traditional Japanese tsubo, functional clay jars dating back to prehistoric times, he creates each sculpture by hand, making use of improvisation and experimentation.

Roger Herman lives and works in Los Angeles, where has has been teaching at UCLA since 1990. The artist, who was born in 1947 in Saarbruecken, Germany, has become a well known figure in the west coast art scene for his large scale paintings and woodcuts, and, in recent years, for strikingly beautiful ceramic vessels. His works are in the public collections of the The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, the Eli Broad Collection, the Albertina, Vienna, Austria and MOMA , New York, among others.

Pei-Hsuan Wang’s practice is rooted in ways of engaging with her identity, much of which is shaped by the artist and her family‘ s diasporic migration from Taiwan to the US. Folklore, family history, bio(mytho)graphical narratives and geopolitical musings are interwoven in her work, which primarily takes the form of sculpture, installation, drawing, and video.

Takuro Kuwata was born in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan in 1981, and is currently based in Gifu, Japan. Following his graduation from Kyoto Saga University of Arts in 2001, in 2002 he began studying under ceramic artist Susumu Zaima. In 2007, he graduated from the Tajimi City Pottery Design and Technical Center. His works have been exhibited globally in cities such as Brussels, London, and New York, and he was a finalist for the LOEWE Craft Prize 2018.

Fusing the corporeal, decorative, historical, and functional, Clementine Keith-Roach (b. 1984) creates detailed, uncanny sculptures that blur boundaries between object and figure. Her work is inspired by clay’s inherent tactility and sensuality, as well as the immediate physical affinity one feels with antique ceramic containers and their readiness to be anthropomorphized. The resulting works simultaneously celebrate the female form and breathe life into the storied histories of domestic objects.

Lindsey Mendick (b.1987, London) lives and works in Margate. Mendick received an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London in 2017. Mendick works predominantly with clay, a medium that is often associated with decoration and the domestic, subverting these historic connotations to create skilled monuments to ‘low culture’ and the contemporary female experience. Often culminating in elaborate installations, Mendick’s autobiographical work offers a form of catharsis, encouraging the viewer to explore their own personal history through the revisionist lens of the artist. Her work challenges the male gaze, promoting instead an unapologetic, humorous and, at times, grotesque femininity.

Shahpour Pouyan was born in Isfahan (Iran) in 1979. He lives and works in London (United Kingdom). Shahpour Pouyan’s work is a commentary about power, domination and possession through the force of culture. His interest lies in singling out particular objects whose images captivate him, and by painting them he releases the feeling of anguish they create. Pouyan’s hooves are symbols for the aspiration of power, lonely beings with vain attempts at grandeur, which are faintly ridiculous, provoking mixed feelings of pity and contempt. The works draw their inspiration from Iranian miniatures with references to the cow as the symbol of power in the ancient cultures of Sumer, Babylon, Iran and Hinduism, emphasising the superego of male aggression throughout the centuries.

Yasunaga (born 1982) lives and works in Iga-shi, Mie Prefecture, Japan. While pottery is typically formed from clay, fired in a kiln and sealed with a finishing coat of glaze, Yasunaga adopts glaze as the primary material from which to build his sculptural works. Combined with unique raw materials such as feldspars, whole rocks, metal or glass powders, Yasunaga’s forms are buried in various strata of sand or kaolin (unrefined porcelain clay) to preserve their structure in the firing stage. The yielded objects appear honed and shaped by earthly elements over centuries, some whole and others curiously fragmented. Aesthetically, these sculptures are simultaneously primitive and contemporary; objects of human culture which appear as if lost and found, seeming to confirm the supremacy of nature’s order over the world of mankind.

Yeesookyung is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Seoul, Korea. Internationally known for her Translated Vase series, Yee combines histories: art historical, spiritual, and cultural into unique objects, imagery, and performances that reflect both her personal heritage and a global borderless moment. Many of her works mix distinct historical references, for example: combining the meditative process-based Tibetan Buddhist silk scroll painting (thangka) with the flat graphic style of Goguryeo Dynasty era cave paintings.

Through his painted figures Jeremy (b. 1996 in Geneva, Switzerland) investigates the expansive and fluid nature of queer identities, yet also represents the troubled and troubling constraints of heteronormativity. The strong and saturated colors in Jeremy’s works contribute to the intensity in the mood of the paintings, staging a disquieting contrast between vibrancy and darkness. The figure is the focal point in his compositions, and the often twisted and distended bodies are evocative of a sense of abjection that follows a lineage of European surrealism, as well as that of magical realism. The androgynous and hybrid figures inhabit an in-between state, subverting and transgressing rigid societal norms and exploring the relation between repulsion and desire.

Uli Aigner was born in Austria in 1965. Following her pottery studies graduating with a journeyman‘s certificate, she studied product design with Matteo Thun at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna, rewarded with a diploma for her efforts (1990). She then studied digital image design with Prof. Thomas Hägele at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg. Since the 90s her work has incorporated videos, performances, space installations, large format crayon drawings and porcelain objects, which are exhibited in renowned international museums, institutions and galleries. Her guest professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (2001-2003) constituted a new focus in her work. As a result she took the reins at the Städtische Kunsthalle Munich / Lothringer 13 from 2006 until 2010. Uli Aigner has lived with her family in Berlin since 2011, where she concentrates on her own artistic production.