Final Press Release:
December 2014
After three fantastic years in the gallery space at Smallegade, Frederiksberg in Copenhagen the time has now come for Copenhagen Ceramics to move on and enter a new phase.
27 very different exhibitions have been shown over these three years and - as anyone having followed CC can testify – the great diversity of expressions within contemporary ceramics has been thoroughly demonstrated. The mediation and rendering visible of this has precisely been our intention and we are very thankful for the huge support and interest, that all our guests and followers have given to the project, in Denmark and internationally.
The gallery space at the back premises of Smallegade 46, Frederiksberg in Copenhagen was closed by the end of season 2014 and the initiators of the Copenhagen Ceramics project are currently working to establish new ways of presenting contemporary ceramics in Denmark and internationally. You can follow news about the project by visiting our blog and sign up for newsletters by filling in the form under contact.
http://copenhagenceramics.blogspot.dk/
Our website will stay active and here you will continuously be able to see all our exhibitions and read press releases for all 27 shows of 2012, 2013 and 2014.
With very best regards
Bente Skjøttgaard, Steen Ipsen og Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
Copenhagen Ceramics
Press Archive 2012:
Press Release
Christin Johansson: Her Alter Ego Universe
22 November – 15 December 2012
In her exhibition, Her Alter Ego Universe, Christin Johansson invites you into a universe saturated with scents, sounds and a rich variety of textures. Crude ceramic surfaces meet wood, velour’s and satin. You recognize the objects and materials, but they are placed in a rather unpredictable context.
Christin Johansson explores and challenges ceramics as an artistic medium. She has earlier, f. inst. in exhibitions such as Bara Brunt/ Just Brown, investigated the potential of ceramics and accentuated the textural qualities of clay in juxtapositions of ceramic objects with other materials and expressions in her handling of a concept.
In her show at Copenhagen Ceramics, Her Alter Ego Universe, she invites you into a universe, saturated with scents, sounds and a rich variety of textures. You may recognize the objects and materials but they are all placed in an unpredictable context. In this displaced world normality, memory - what is right and real – is questioned. As a guest you get a feeling of being in a ‘time-crease’, a flashback of 18-century Meissen, unfolding through the ceramics and collected items and laid bare in the individual objects.
Over recent years Augustine has manifested herself and created her own subtle Universe, where one senses that all her dreams may come true. The wunderkammer of Augustine is a true microcosmos consisting of a jumble for the senses. Here you can go exploring her treasures that are hidden in cupboards, drawers and indefinable objects with shapes and expressions of another world. You feel at home in Augustine’s wunderkammer, yet something is strange – a gust of another era – playing a trick on you as if in a dream that you just woke up from and cannot quite remember.
Do come inside the world of Augustine. Share her universe for a while. If you are lucky – and stay long enough - you may be presented with one of her small texts, elaborated during the silent morning hours when she is all alone with her thoughts.
Throughout the last decade Christin Johansson has been a remarkable innovator within the field of ceramics. She has been exhibiting widely in Scandinavia and abroad, for instance at Gustavsberg Kunsthal, Stockholm; Biennale Internationale de Vallauris; Röhsska Museet, Gothenburg; Grimmerhus, International Ceramics Museum, DK. Her works are represented in several museums and private collections.
In connection with the exhibition, Her Alter Ego Universe, following events will be held at Copenhagen Ceramics:
Thursday, 22 November at 5 – 8 pm: Housewarming/opening of exhibition
At the spectacular opening of Her Alter Ego Universe, you will be welcomed by the Holbæk Guards; you can enjoy your drink while listening to music by the band, Trash Drag, of artist and performer Dennis Agerblad. In the wondrous world of Augustine you will hear the tones from the harp of Nina Schlemm and meet the trapeze artist, contortionist and juggler, who for this special occasion are joining Augustine.
Saturday 24 November at 2 pm Copenhagen Ceramics invites to an artist talk with Christin Johansson at the gallery.
Friday 30 November at 5 pm: ’Casanovas nutid’ (The Present Time of Casanova). Lecture by Päivi Ernkvist and Anders Ernkvist (www.figurine-dialogue.com)
Saturday 8 December at 1 pm: ‘Alt foregår på samme tid hele tiden’ ( Everything Happens at the Same Time All the Time). Lecture by Gitte Jul (www.gittejul.dk)
Copenhagen Ceramics
Smallegade 46, baghuset 2. sal tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Denmark
Contact: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
martin@copenhagenceramics.com
Wednesday — Friday: 1 – 5 pm
Saturday: 12 am – 4 pm
Christin Johansson at Copenhagen Ceramics
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Christin Johansson at Copenhagen Ceramics
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Christin Johansson: My own little Circus Horse
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Christin Johansson: The Bar, H: 170cm D: 85cm W: 54cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Christin Johansson: Detail from The Bar
Photo: Lisa Strömbäck
Christin Johansson: Detail from The Muse Cabinet
Photo from Meissen, Germany
Photo: Lisa Strömbäck
Cristin Johansson: Detail from The Horse Furniture
Photo: Lisa Strömback
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Press Release
Marianne Nielsen and Anne Tophøj: Elitist Folklore
25 October – 17 November 2012
The dish, the plate, the table and the flower. These common everyday objects and the most beloved iconic shapes from nature are framing in the lives of most people. For their shared exhibition at Copenhagen Ceramics Marianne Nielsen and Anne Tophøj are investigating why and how we value these universal expressions of culture and nature. But what is elitist folklore? What does it look like
from their point of view?
Marianne Nielsen occupies a very special position in Danish Ceramics. She takes interest, in an almost nerdy way, in the rôle of nature in our culture. In recent years her work often has concluded in definite renderings of natural subjects: mountains, feathers, leaves and now flowers and plants. As a kind of souvenir they refer to something beyond ourselves, being continuous, universal and something which, through its authenticity, contains an essential beauty. Yet, the representations of nature are about ourselves, since they only acquire their meaning through our very own gaze.
Marianne Nielsen articulates this: ’Flowers hold a modest position in the arts as something banal, soft, often assigned the subordinate part. For these pieces I have let the flower be on its own, allowing it to make up the entire work. The works are about what is not directly present – the references linked to flowers, both as representatives of beauty and natural souvenirs. But they also deal with that particular application that has worn down the flower-motif and turned it into a cliché.’
In a similar way Anne Tophøj is working with the values and inherent meanings of things. Either because the artefacts contain specific images or symbols that pass on a story or message, or by suggesting a particular use or way of handling.
Characteristic of her work she investigates the dish and the plate, objects that we are all very familiar with and make daily use of. As she herself puts it:’ The plate and the dish are signs of human culture
and how we raise ourselves above the animals; they are pivotal in all eating rituals and our daily meals. Artefacts that we all have in common – universal, banal, indispensable tools helping us to sustain life. They are beloved and treasured objects that different cultures and times have shaped endlessly for
use and for ornamentation, for the table and for the wall.’
For this show Anne Tophøj has worked with two types of objects: the dishes, where she uses the surface for primitive and simplified pictorial representations of life and death. She circles about the face and the skull as a common human symbol. In parallel to this she investigates the plate that, as any tool, signals a specific use – the shape being determined by its presumed content. When you look
at her works in the exhibition you have to ask yourself: what are they for? Who will be using them
and how? What will be eaten off them and how do you do that? The answer is in the plate.
Both ceramists have exhibited widely in galleries and museums in Denmark and abroad. Their works have been acquired for public and private collections.
Works by Anne Tophøj are in the collections of The National Museum, Stockholm; Designmuseum Danmark; Trapholt Museum of Art, DK, and she has received the three-year-working grant of the Danish Arts Council. In addition to her personal practice she is teaching part-time at School of Design at the Royal Danish Academy of Art.
Marianne Nielsen has exhibited at The Biennial of Crafts and Design, DK, Design museum Danmark, Ceramics Museum Grimmerhus and many more. She received the Annie and Otto Detlefs Travel Grant in 2011, Ole Haslund Fund, the-three- year working grant of the Danish Arts Council and is represented in its collection. Marianne Nielsen works also as free-lance designer for Kähler Design.
On Saturday 27 October at 2 pm. Copenhagen Ceramics invites to an Artist talk at the gallery with
both artists.
Copenhagen Ceramics
Smallegade 46, baghuset 2. sal tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Contact: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
Mobile: 2728 5452
martin@copenhagenceramics.com
Wednesday — Friday: 1 – 5 pm
Saturday: 12 am – 4 pm
Anne Tophøj and Marianne Nielsen at Copenhagen Ceramics
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen Holmgreen
Anne Tophøj: Fictile 12.3. plate 1 -12
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Marianne Nielsen: 'Pine' and 'Cone'
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Anne Tophøj: Fictile 12.3. dish 3
Marianne Nielsen: 'Cowberry' and 'Marsh Marigold'
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Anne Tophøj: Fictile 12.3. dish 8
Marianne Nielsen: 'Catkins', object for the wall
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Marianne Nielsen: Oxeye Daisy, 2012, h 33 x w 20 cm, stoneware with glaze, hand built
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Anne Tophøj: Fictil 12.3, dish1, 2012, h 44 x w 41 x d 4,5 cm, porcelain slipcast
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Press Archive
Press Release:
Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl: Other Objects
Thursday 27 September – 20 October 2012
In his solo show at Copenhagen Ceramics Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl will be showing new ceramic works along two seemingly separate tracks: Knots and tree trunks – and the space around them. The apparently disparate form-themes meet in a visual, rhythmic play with the boundaries between distinct figuration and abstraction.
Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl’s pieces are non-narrative, but contain stories on the formal and ornamental level. He is interested in visual and emotional perception and investigates how the experience of familiar things from our immediate surroundings can be displaced on purely visual terms and open up to a different understanding of these things as something other – poetic objects.
In his work Kaldahl always places the expressive potential of form at the centre. The precise formal language is characteristic. His ceramic pieces consist of very distinct components, often well known form-types. For example, in recent years, the branch, the tree trunk or a basic cultural expression such as the knot, have been at play. He puts things under close scrutiny. To consider the knot as subject for sculptural elaboration you must take it deeply seriously: its capacity for spatiality, the importance of scale, monumentalizing. Likewise with the tree trunk and the clean cuts of its lopped branches . In the new works this functions as point of departure for form-variations, that point to the tree as both nature and culture.
But for Kaldahl this is not primarily an account of our cultural relationship with nature. He puts emphasis on the purely visual conditions and how they affect us. How we sensually experience the rhythm of the shifting planes, the volume of the form, the texture of materials and how we are moved emotionally in a direct movement from the object to the body – a parallel to the direct impact of music on our senses.
Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl has been exhibiting internationally and in Denmark over many years and
his works are represented in important public and private collections, e.g. the V&A Museum in London; Musée d’Art Decoratifs, Paris; Designmuseum Danmark; National Museum, Oslo; Röhsska Museet, Gothenburg; Trapholt Art Museum, DK; International Ceramics Museum Grimmerhus,DK; The Annie and Otto Johs. Detlefs Collection, DK; Diane and Marc Grainer Collection, Washington and more. He has received several awards, e.g. The Crafts Council Annual Award, DK (2001);
The Sotheby Award, UK; Honorary Award of the Ole Haslund Fund and The Inga and Ejvind Kold Christensen Prize in 2011.
Since 1997 he has also been employed part time as lecturer at Danmarks Designskole. From 2005 – 2008 he was guest designer with an artistic research programme at the school, developing a range of digital projects and methods that continue to play an important part in his working process.
Copenhagen Ceramics invites to an Artist talk with Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl on Saturday 29 September at 2pm at the gallery.
Copenhagen Ceramics
Smallegade 46, baghuset 2. sal tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Contact: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
Mobile: 2728 5452
martin@copenhagenceramics.com
Wednesday — Friday: 1 – 5 pm
Saturday: 12 am – 4 pm
Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl: ‘Knot’, 2012. H: 106 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl at Copenhagen Ceramics
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen Holmgreen
Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl: Guardian / Circumstantial Edifice 1, 2012. H: 49 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen Holmgreen
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Press Archive
Press Release:
Louise Hindsgavl and Gitte Jungersen:
Setting the Stage
30 August – 22 September 2012
For their upcoming exhibition at Copenhagen Ceramics – Setting the Stage – Louise Hindsgavl and Gitte Jungersen are each showing their variant of a contemporary version of the figurative ceramic tradition. They both share an interest in visually expressing the psychological aspects of life and their wish to reflect the inner life of humans in figurative works with elements of animal and human being.
From children’s books and fairy tales we are used to projecting human characteristics on to animals and so we likewise identify with the drama that takes place in the ceramic scenes of Jungersen and Hindsgavl.
The ceramic expression of Louise Hindsgavl and Gitte Jungersen differ widely. But each have, in their own way, revived the figurative tradition and renewed its relevance. The porcelain figure is a starting point for both, but the kitschy and banal references, that are normally attached to this genre, are replaced and transformed into underlying, more disquieting messages. The figure or the figurine – which plays an ever important rôle in the history of ceramics – often contains wit and humour and is of lesser scale than that of sculpture, is well suited for both artists’ commenting accounts on big and small dramas of life.
For the exhibition at Copenhagen Ceramics Gitte Jungersen has taken a new step. She has in recent years been transforming the stories of found, industrially produced, porcelain animals by inserting them through firing into new landscape-like ’scenes’. This feature of the earlier works is now to a large degree substituted by abstract structures made up of squared shapes. However, these otherwise stable forms are falling in, collapsing and broken at times. The dissolution is further emphasized by masses of glaze, that overflow the shapes as big blobs, partially erasing them. The scenes evoke a sensation of the uncontrollable and catastrophic, while the ceramic appear sensually specious and beautiful.
Glazes play a very special rôle in the works of Gitte Jungersen. She is known for her heavily sensual surfaces of great textural complexity. The bubbly surfaces of her pieces result from the glazes ’boiling’ at top temperature of the ceramic kiln and the subsequent rapid solidifying in the cooling-process. Thus the handling itself of the materials contributes to emphasizing the thematic content. Whether it’s a nearing dissolution awaiting or rather a new narrative in the making, is left open for you to decide.
Louise Hindsgavl’s contribution to the exhibition circles around the loss of innocence, the confusion and the transformation, that happens in the transition from childhood to becoming an adult. For this show, Hindsgavl has chosen to work with a totally different expression than her well-known porcelain-figures and their absurdist accounts about the darker recesses of the human mind. In recent years she has also experimented with including other materials and ready-mades in her porcelain tableaus. Now the pieces are bigger, of a coarser nature and with quite a different volume than she has mainly been using, but her works still invite to our ongoing discussion about pure and impure.
The work ’Luckys & Bunnys’ refers to the tale of Alice in Wonderland, where the child meets change in the shape of an unknown magical world and where the rabbit is the central element, pulling the child through its development.
Both artists have over many years been frequent exhibitors in Denmark and internationally.
Their works have been acquired by many museums worldwide as well as by private collectors. Louise Hindsgavl is represented at e.g. Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The National Museum, Stockholm; New Carlsberg Foundation, Denmark; the Röhsska Museet, Gothenburg; Designmuseum Danmark; Trapholt Museum of Art, Denmark.
The works of Gitte Jungersen are in collections of e.g. Designmuseum Danmark; the Natioanl Museum, Stockholm;; McManus Galleries; UK, Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum, Norway; New Carlsberg Foundation, Denmark and International Ceramics Museum Grimmerhus, Denmark.
The exhibition will be opened by Adrian Hughes, host of cultural programmes at National Danish Television.
On Saturday, 1. September at 2 pm. Copenhagen Ceramics invites to an Artist talk with both artists at the gallery, where art historian Jorunn Veiteberg also will be putting the work of Jungersen and Hindsgavl into perspective in a historical and contemporary international context.
Copenhagen Ceramics
Smallegade 46, baghuset 2. sal tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Contact: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
Mobile: 2728 5452
martin@copenhagenceramics.com
Wednesday — Friday: 1 – 5 pm
Saturday: 12 am – 4 pm
Louise Hindsgavl and Gitte Jungersen at Copenhagen Ceramics
Photo Jeppe Gudmundsen Holmgreen
Louise Hindsgavl: Part of the installation “Luckys and Bunnys”, stoneware, 2012.
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Louise Hindsgavl: Part of the installation “Luckys and Bunnys”, stoneware, 2012. H: 50 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Gitte Jungersen: Place to be Lost # 23, stoneware with found figure, 2012.
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Gitte Jungersen:”Place to be Lost”, stoneware with found figure, 2012. L: 60 cm x H: 24 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Press Archive
Press Release:
Oh la la – Majolica … a Pottery Slam
by Peder Rasmussen and Michael Geertsen
24. May – 16. June 2012
With their common educational background in the now almost vanished pottery tradition, Danish ceramists Michael Geertsen and Peder Rasmussen are challenging themselves and each other in an exhibition-tour-de-force within a classic ceramics discipline, the Majolica – tradition. Not only have they produced their individual works – but occasionally they have left the decorating of their own pieces to the other.
Michael Geertsen and Peder Rasmussen both belong to the small group of contemporary ceramists, who also apprenticed as potters – in their certificates termed as free-hand-throwers.
As young they found themselves in a world of age-old crafts and were thus among the last links
in a very long chain.
Speaking of this, they say: ’We both share great love of classic pottery; of the idea of the vessel and the ceramic figure as artistic medium, even in a world being ever more technological, as far from our starting point as can be imagined. Does this show in our work? Is there any reminiscence of something archetypical still present in our otherwise highly contemporary expression? In our own opinion, yes! We actually insist that our education within a tradition-bound craft has imbued us
with a deep respect for professionalism. It has also provided us with a reservoir of references – possibilities for ’professional quoting’. Anything goes. With the apprenticeship-certificate as baggage, we know that there are lots of unoccupied seats within the space of tradition’.
This time both ceramists work with Majolica, the age-old technique of white-glazed and decorated earthenware, known especially from the Italian renaissance. From the great artists of the Della Robbia dynasty or the Deruta- workshops. Hispano-Mauresque faience, too, has been in their view with its ornamentation, lustres and other metallic effects. The technique itself tempts with a richness of colour unequalled in other techniques, thus offering possibilities for new stories, stylistic approaches and quotes.
The exhibition is resulting from a long dialogue between both ceramists. Not only have they made their individual works , but occasionally they have left the actual decorating of their own pieces
to the other. Out of pure curiosity and in full confidence that this kind of ’obstruction’ will lead
to something new.
Both artists have long and comprehensive exhibition-careers behind them in Denmark and internationally. Their works are represented in important museum collections worldwide: Michael Geertsen’s works are in the V&A Museum in London, Metropolitan Museum , New York; Museum
of Art and Design, New York and Designmuseum Danmark to mention a few. Peder Rasmussen
is represented in the collections of the V&A, London; The National Museum, Stockholm; Museum
für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg and many more.
Copenhagen Ceramics has the pleasure of inviting to an artist talk with both ceramists on Saturday,
26 May at 2. p.m in the gallery.
Copenhagen Ceramics
Smallegade 46, baghuset 2. sal tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Contact: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
Mobile: 2728 5452
martin@copenhagenceramics.com
Wednesday — Friday: 1 – 5 pm
Saturday: 12 am – 4 pm
Peder Rasmussen: Archadia. Earthenware jug with Majolica decoration, 2012. H: 36 cm
Foto: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Michael Geertsen: Standing Object. Earthenware with Majolica decoration, 2012. H: 66 cm
Foto: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Michael Geertsen and Peder Rasmussen at Copenhagen Ceramics
Foto: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Left: Michael Geertsen, Standing Object – Right: Peder Rasmussen: Romantic jug
Foto: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Left: Peder Rasmussen, Out of Place – Right: Michael Geertsen: Standing Object
Foto: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Co-works: Left Archadia – Right: Golden Jug
Foto: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Press Archive
Press Release:
Inhabitants: Orders
26 April – 19 May 2012
Dear colleague, I’d like to commission a cake stand from you.
It should be……
For their upcoming exhibition at Copenhagen Ceramics the six young ceramists behind the group Inhabitants have chosen to work with the cake stand as their theme. They have placed orders for new cake stands with each other, each giving directions as to what they wish the others to deliver. 30 bids for new cake stands emerged out of this – as crossbreeds of the commissioner and the interpreting maker. The results can be enjoyed at the new Copenhagen Ceramics gallery from 26 April – 19 May 2012.
Inhabitants are Danish ceramists Mikael Jackson, Kristine Tillge Lund, Signe Schjøth, Louise Birch, Ole Vesterlund and Christin Johansson. They have used the story that the Copenhagen Ceramics gallery-space formerly was a cake factory to put the theme of cake stands or cake-dishes to the fore. The group was founded in 2010 and operates collectively in parallel with the individual careers of each artist.
The aim of the group’s activities is to establish other ways of practicing than allowed for in the singular processes and methods of each artist. The group looks for new approaches and ways to scrutinize the creative process itself. What happens if your own working habits are challenged? Or if the very idea of the autonomy of the individual in the creative process is questioned? What if you, as an artist, were asked to carry out the idea and vision of someone else – if you received an order from your colleague? How would you interpret this vision? And how much of your own personality would or should be present in the finished work?
For the exhibition at Copenhagen Ceramics each artist has produced five cake stands according to the individual directions of the colleagues. The orders given are highly different – with more or less inspiration from the wondrous cultural history of cake-eating. From Rococo-fantasies to Cadbury-matter-of-factness. Or from looking at why cakes often have been named after celebrity actors or composers? Will we soon be seeing a Trentemøller-cake, named after the popular contemporary Danish musician? And what would the cake stand for it look like?
The members of Inhabitants have all graduated within the last ten years. Their individual works – however different in character – are rooted in a contemporary conceptual approach towards creating artistic expression. This is evident too in their way of dealing with even the functional tradition, as this exhibition will show.
The artists of the group are all among the leading ceramists of the younger Danish generation. Many of them already have a long and impressive exhibition record behind them, both in Denmark and abroad. They have received prizes, e.g. The Annie and Otto Johs. Detlefs Ceramics Award for talented and original contributions to the further development of the strong Danish ceramics tradition.
Saturday 28 April at 2 pm. the gallery invites to an Artist talk with Inhabitants.
Copenhagen Ceramics
Smallegade 46, baghuset 2. sal tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Contact: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
Mobile: 2728 5452
martin@copenhagenceramics.com
Wednesday — Friday: 1 – 5 pm
Saturday: 12 am – 4 pm
Inhabitants: Orders 2012
Fotos: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Inhabitants at Copenhagen Ceramics
Louise Birch; h.30 cm, w. 30 cm
Ole Vesterlund; h.30 cm w. 30 cm
Signe Schjøth; h. 30 cm w.30 cm
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Press Archive
Press Release:
Turi Heisselberg Pedersen: My Garden
29 March – 21 April 2012
Ceramic Growths
New York-based critic, writer and gallerist, Garth Clark, opens My Garden, the upcoming exhibition
by Danish ceramist Turi Heisselberg Pedersen at Copenhagen Ceramics on 29 March
at the vernissage from 5 – 8 pm
’I love my garden, its plants and vigorous growths. Its potency of growth that within one season
can produce an enormous plant from a tiny seed. It contains such a wealth of amazing and strange shapes, textures and colours. Furthermore it is a curious mix of nature and cultivation, of something dirty or beautiful, of poetry and ugliness. Certain things bloom and grow, some go wrong, unsuccessfully. It is a world of controlled nature, which is shaped, trimmed and reworked,
not unlike the world of clay’ Turi Heisselberg Pedersen explains on the inspiration for her show.
Her garden can be experienced at Copenhagen Ceramics from 29 March through 21 April 2012
For the exhibition My Garden Turi Hesisselberg Pedersen has created a new series of works inspired by the patterns, textures and structures in her garden. In the process of transforming
this into ceramics works, two overall themes have emerged:
Vases inspired by buds and growths
On one hand you find a group of precise, simple and cultivated shapes. For example vases inspired by the tautness of swelling flower buds – formal expressions that may seem almost vulgar. Or abstract, simple vase-shapes miming the upward, rhythmic patterns of plant-growth. Both act as ceramic equivalents to the trimmed and cultivated nature of gardens and an interpretation of the underlying order.
The opposite theme renders visible the sprouting life under ground. Out of this, works in the shape
of organic, bulbous forms and seed capsules emerge with coarse, expressive surfaces or fluted structures. Careless growths and root-like forms, testifying to the more unruly forces of the garden.
In her new exhibition, Turi Heisselberg Pedersen will be showing some all-new, expressive and asymmetric works, where she explores the inherent character and textural freshness of the clay. Other pieces are more typical of her and display her mastery of simplified sculptural vessels, where rhythm, lines and the interplay between forms are recurrent themes.
Turi Heisselberg Pedersen has already for many years constituted a strong presence on the Danish ceramics scene. With indefatigable persistence she has worked her material, clay, towards a very personal and distinctive formal language. All has been pared down in the abstract and simple,
yet sensuous works of Turi Heisselberg Pedersen.
The Abstract Vessel
With her departure in the tradition Turi has, all through her career, strived to develop the vessel
as abstract form. The vessel as independent object, one might say. Her monumental pots appear strongly with precise, almost two-dimensional profiles and yet, simultaneously, they occupy the surrounding space totally with surfaces and colours inviting to be touched and sensed in all their three-dimensionality.
Turi Heisselberg Pedersen is represented in museums and private collections worldwide: Musée Magnelli, Musée de la Ceramique, Vallauris, France; Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen; Schloss Gottorf, Schlesvig-Holsteinisches Landesmuseum, Germany; Danish Arts Foundation; Annie and Otto Johs. Detlef´s Foundation, Denmark. In 2011 she received the Ole Haslund Artist Prize and in 2010 she was awarded Le Prix in the section ’contenant’ of the XXIst International Biennal of Vallauris (BiCC).
Artist talk with Turi Heisselberg Pedersen in the gallery on Saturday, 31 March at 2 pm.
Copenhagen Ceramics
Smallegade 46, 2. sal tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Contact: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
Mobile: 2728 5452
martin@copenhagenceramics.com
Wednesday — Friday: 1 – 5 pm
Saturday: 12 am – 4 pm
Turi Heisselberg Pedersen at Copenhagen Ceramics, April 2012
Turi Heisselberg Pedersen. Growth: H 31cm x W 27cm
Turi Heisselberg Pedersen. Detail, Tuber: H 30cm x W 14cm
Turi Heisselberg Pedersen. Yellow growth: H 68cm x W 24cm. Tuber: H 40cm x W 25cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Turi Heisselberg Pedersen. Tuber: H 22cm x W 15cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
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Press Release:
Karen Bennicke and Steen Ipsen: Geometrical Evolution
1 – 24 March 2012.
Geometric Interpretations
For its next exhibition Copenhagen Ceramics will present new works by Karen Bennicke and Steen Ipsen, two highly experienced ceramists with a particularly well-developed sense of operating visually within one of the great fields of inspiration for ornamentation – the world of geometry.
Karen Bennicke and Steen Ipsen have both repeatedly returned to this inexhaustible source of astonishment and fascination, and for their first exhibition together they offer new and surprising visual interpretations of geometric phenomena.
Karen Bennicke has for many years remained a remarkable profile within the context of contemporary ceramics, in Denmark and internationally. First and foremost, she is a real form-person. Her ceramic objects are typically characterized by a great complexity of form; they are spatial visions, often constructions reminiscent of contemporary architecture. Through self-defined systems and an almost intuitive mathematical construction-method, she arrives at surprising, poetic expressions somewhere between exactitude, the illogical and occasionally even the absurd.
Regarding the new works, she explains: ’My theory was, that if I set up a system of geometric planes, where every broken line, each surface and side-length was indicating a shared community – would it then, out all these different figures, be possible to construct a three-dimensional work? Without cheating too much and still being able to preserve the personal expression, the tangible and experimental approach?’.
Light and shadow are always important factors in Karen Bennicke’s sculptures. In the new works the choice of material helps to emphasize the multi-faceted surface, that has resulted from her process this time. The unglazed, matt clay surfaces enhance the great variation of light and shadow, bringing to mind the kaleidoscopic universe of crystals; a recurrent theme in her oeuvre, and one she has intensively been working on in recent years.
The precise approach of the textbooks is not defining the relationship with geometry for Steen Ipsen either. He perceives geometry as images and pattern. From the very start of his ceramic career he has had a keen eye for the ornamental potential within the universe of geometric form. Early examples of this are his large porcelain vessels from the 1990ies with strict, repetitively faceted forms, that turn into brightly coloured patterns on the surface. In later works he has thematically explored repetition in the form – or the ’variation of repetition’, as was his title for an earlier exhibition.
Over the last five years, he has successfully made a name for himself internationally with ceramic works consisting of joined, simply coloured spherical elements, that are subsequently tied up with coloured strings in a connecting line-pattern, resulting in an abstract and highly spatial, sculptural expression. These works, rooted in the geometric, brings about associations of an erotic nature, as much as they are reminiscent of early modernist sculptural experiments of the Bauhaus, Barbara Hepworth or Henry Moore.
In his new work he focuses on the geometric shapes and the contrasts of surfaces. Light and shadow of in-between-spaces, reflections of the glazes and the rhytmic displacement of the single elements in the sculptures, are being used freely for interpretations of the cubic abstraction and for exploring the possibilities of multiple dimensions. ’What interests me, he says, is precisely the impact obtained through a non- correct rendering of the geometric forms’.
Both artists are represented in major international museum collections. Karen Bennicke’s work, including: the V&A – Museum, London; Designmuseum Danmark: Trapholt Art Museum, DK; The National Museum, Stockholm;
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg and Gifu Museum of Modern Ceramics, Japan. Karen Bennicke has received numerous awards, including the Annie og Otto Johs. Detlefs Award for Ceramics in 2010 and the Inga and Eyvind Kold Christensen Fund in the previous year.
Steen Ipsen’s work is in the collections of the V&A Museum, London; Musée Magnelli, Vallauris, France; Museum of Art and Design, Hamburg; Icheon World Ceramic Center, Korea; Designmuseum Denmark; Trapholt Art Museum, DK and the New Carlsberg Foundation, DK. He received the Annie and Otto Johs. Detlefs’ Award for Ceramics in 2011.
Artist talk with Karen Bennicke and Steen Ipsen on Saturday 3 March at 2 pm in the gallery.
Copenhagen Ceramics
Smallegade 46, 2. sal tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Contact: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
Mobile: 2728 5452
martin@copenhagenceramics.com
Wednesday — Friday: 1 – 5 pm
Saturday: 12 am – 4 pm
Karen Bennicke. Kaleidoscope, H 82 cm B 75 cm
Steen Ipsen. Black Geometric 1/12, H 51 cm B 21 cm
Photos: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Karen Bennicke and Steen Ipsen at Copenhagen Ceramics, March 2012
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Karen Bennicke, 2012, Kaleidoscope, h 82 x w 75 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Karen Bennicke, 2012, Snowball, h 30 x w 45 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Steen Ipsen, 2012, Black/Red Geometric 2/12, h 24 x w 25 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Steen Ipsen, 2012, Black Geometric 8/12, h 71 x w 27 cm and Black Geometric 9/12, h 36 x w 36 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Press Archive
Press Release:
Bodil Manz and Bente Skjøttgaard : Cuts and Interventions
2 – 25 February 2012.
Wheel-Tracks in Clay Meet Sampled Porcelain
Opposites will meet when Bodil Manz and Bente Skjøttgaard, two of Denmark’s well awarded ceramists, convene in their upcoming exhibition, ’Cuts and Interventions’. They belong to different generations and traditions, but for this show, they have decided to explore possible common denominators. The result can be seen and experienced from February 2 – 25 at Copenhagen Ceramics, the new gallery for contemporary ceramics in Copenhagen.
In their first ever co-exhibition, two of Denmark’s very distinct artistic profiles have decided to explore possible common denominators in their otherwise very contrasting work. The title of the show, ’Cuts and Interventions’ is referring to the characteristic manner, in which both ceramists are handling materials and working-processes.
Bodil Manz, world renowned for her paper-thin cylinders in porcelain, sets out to investigate her own ceramic history. She takes her casting- moulds, used for earlier works, to pieces and re-uses and re-interpretes these shapes and tools into new works that are sampled and juxtaposed with completely new form-parts, as kinds of traces from her studio through time. In other works she arrives at new graphic ornaments on her porcelain cylinders, inspired by the jumble of squared off-cut-shapes gathering around on the floor during her job of applying transfers, ceramic colour and laquer, to the glazed clay body. ’Recycling of my own work’, these pieces might be called, she reflects. In this process Bodil Manz, in a poetic manner, puts a stop to parts of her former work, yet opens doors to a new universe that organically grows out of her life-long investigations into the material.
The works of Bodil Manz are characterized by their strong graphic patterns, often geometrically based, that bear witness to her mastery of a refined material and an aesthetically sovereign, contemporary interpretation of a modernist heritage.
Is it OK to drive on the wall?
Bente Skjøttgaard investigates other options for a contemporary ornament. Is it OK to drive on the wall? she asks, and answers by intervening with the soft, sensual material by running her Fiat Multipla car with Pirelli P7 tyres slowly through the clay, leaving a simple and direct imprint in the oblong mass of slapped-on stoneware clay. A decorative frieze with an easily recognizable ornament of our time. Through the subsequent glazing and firing to 1280 degrees C, the friezes transform and may acquire variations in character. The series of Frieze P7, however, are not expressive or violent – rather they invite quiet reflection.
This work follows up on a previous work of hers from 2011. On the ground, by the ancient road ‘Hærvejen’, running through Jutland, she has installed a large 40 sq. meter clay relief , in which she let a group of young cattle set their hoof imprints in the clay, as a tribute to the ancient trade of cattle on the road. Obviously, this gesture also refers to the large ceramic relief by Asger Jorn from1959, at Århus Statsgymnasium, a work in which he, during it’s execution, took a ride on his scooter across the wet clay..
Bente Skjøttgaard has made her name as a fearless handler of the ceramic material, expressive and generous. She continuously rediscovers and reinvents the very qualities of clay itself; first magically demonstrating its malleabilty and later carrying on her playful approach, utilizing with great imagination and humour anything that can happen in the tranformational process of glazing and the subsequent firing of the work.
Both artists have exhibited widely internationally with work represented in important museum collections worldwide. They have received numerous awards, and both have participated in the prestigious Gyeonggi International Biennale ( formerly World Ceramic Biennale) in the Republic of South Korea, Bodil Manz winning the Grand Prize here in 2007. Bente Skjøttgaard received the Annie and Otto Johs. Detlefs Ceramic Prize.
Copenhagen Ceramics
Smallegade 46, 2. sal tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Contact: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
Mobile: 2728 5452
martin@copenhagenceramics.com
Wednesday — Friday: 1 – 5 pm
Saturday: 12 am – 4 pm
Bodil Manz. White Sampling, 2011. Porcelain, h 34 x d 45 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
White Samplings, 2011. Porcelain
Photo: Erik Brahl
Bente Skjøttgaard. Frieze P7, 2012. Stoneware, 80 x 28 x 4 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Bodil Manz and Bente Skjøttgaard at Copenhagen Ceramics, February, 2012
Bodil Manz, 2012. White Samplings, porcelain
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Bodil Manz, 2012. Cylinder, porcelain, h 18 x dia 23 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Bente Skjøttgaard, 2012. Frieze P7 no 1209, 1207 and 1210. Stoneware, 180 x 45 x 7 cm
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Bente Skjøttgaard, 2012. Frieze P7 no 1210, detail
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Press Archive
Press Release:
Anders Ruhwald: You will see
5 – 28 January 2012
Copenhagen Ceramics, a new exhibition venue for contemporary Danish ceramics, opens its doors on January 5th 2012 with a solo- exhibition by ceramic artist Anders Ruhwald, Danish born and currently working and living in Detroit. Ruhwald’s career now spans more than ten years of groundbreaking work and an impressive international exhibition activity.
In his upcoming exhibition,’You will see’, at Copenhagen Ceramics, he focuses in on a specific
range of objects. These objects: traffic cones, warning markers and barriers normally all function
as specific entities that guide and control movement in the public realm. In this exhibition, however, the objects are taken under consideration and seem to be changed over and placed in a different sphere, where our cultural understanding of them is questioned. What are they now? Sculptural appropriations of everyday objects or possibly just the objects themselves rendered in a different material? Some of the work in the show manifest itself as functional objects such as lamps or vases. These objects share the aesthetic qualities with the other work in the exhibition, yet as form typologies they situate themselves in a different category.
The exhibition “You will see” suggests a sense of collapse between the realms of public and domestic- proposing an uneasy relationship between the two, where anxieties of public life bleeds into the domestic and the decorative.
Anders Ruhwald was educated at the Glass and Ceramics School at Bornholm ( now part of the Design School at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts) and later at Royal College of Art in London. He is at present Artist-in-Residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where
he also heads Department of Ceramics.
Ruhwald has received a number of international awards including a three year working stipend from the Danish Art Foundation; the Sotheby Prize from the V&A Museum in London and the goldmedal
at the Gyeonggi International Biennale in the Rep of South Korea 2011. Ruhwald has won much critical acclaim for his conceptual work that explores the boundaries of the ceramic medium
as an idea and a material.
The exhibition is supported by Danish Crafts and Danmarks Nationalbanks Jubilæumsfond af 1968
Copenhagen Ceramics
Smallegade 46, 2. sal tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Contact: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl
Mobile: 2728 5452
martin@copenhagenceramics.com
Wednesday — Friday: 1 – 5 pm
Saturday: 12 am – 4 pm
Anders Ruhwald at Copenhagen Ceramics
Section, Version 1, 2010. Vases, 2010. Glazed earthenware
Photos by Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
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