Bente Hansen: Lemon-blue Memories
Morten Løbner Espersen: Magic Mushrooms

Welcome to the opening Thursday 31 January 5 – 8 pm. On Saturday 2 February at 2 pm you are invited to an Artist Talk with Bente Hansen and Morten Løbner Espersen

Bente Hansen and Morten Løbner Espersen at Copenhagen Ceramics
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen


Morten Løbner Espersen, Magic Mushrooms 2013
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen


Bente Hansen, Pjaltefisk 2013
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen


Morten Løbner Espersen: MM#56, h 36 cm x Ø 12 cm, stoneware and glaze, 2013
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen


Bente Hansen: The Sea Witch, h 35 x w 45 x d 16 cm, stoneware, 2013
Photo: Jeppe Gudmundsen-Holmgreen


Morten Løbner Espersen: Magic Mushrooms
Bente Hansen: Lemon-blue Memories
31.01 – 23.02 2013

In its first show of 2013, Copenhagen Ceramics has the pleasure of presenting new works by two strong names in the firmament of Danish ceramics. With the acid-trip of Morten Løbner Espersen’s forms and glazes and Bente Hansen taking us on a journey into all-new mutations of her well-known formal universe, the scene is set for a great bath for the senses.

Magic Mushrooms

In this exhibition ceramist Morten Løbner Espersen, for the first time, shows works, that are not interpretations of the classic vessels of ceramic history.

The new series, arriving fresh from the kiln, he calls Magic Mushrooms.
’The series is an acid-trip’, he states, ’they are mind-expanding’.

The abstract, organic formal language of these pieces offers many possible interpretations.The works still adhere to the recognizable ceramic dogma: they are modelled, fired, glazed and refired again and again. They are simple shapes, coming alive in the firing, but contrary to most of Espersen’s ceramic oeuvre, these figures are sketchy, rapidly and unpretentiously modelled. Morten Løbner Espersen did not wish for formal splendour, he wants to play and entertain. In the new works he has let himself go and improvised.

Is the Moon the same? Is the Year as before?

For this show Bente Hansen has worked with two different ceramic expressions:

In one part she circles around the amorphous; her works are softly formed, organic creatures, that appear in contrast to the pure, oval cylinders, which constitute the other group of works. Always with her characteristic precision and formal strength. The pieces emerge out the flat plane. Like the sandy sediment whipped up into spatial elements. Conquering space.

Bente Hansen reflects on the new works: ‘I am wondering, though curiously affirmed, how my formal universe keeps repeating itself in ever-new mutations. Might they be new answers to old questions? As a track? Not one – but many. Sometimes distinct, at other times disappearing, always in transformation. In my works I wish to surprise, to seduce. However, first of all I wish to liberate my visions of form and colours and the indelicacies of the imagination. As with poems of Jens August Schade ( Danish poet, 1920 -1978 ) on the seductiveness of art, we let ourselves be seduced – by the beauty of the erotic – by the electrifying touch.

Hell Dissolves Itself
Lemon – blue Memories
The Rhythmic Darkness of the Waves

Both ceramists have long established exhibition-careers with representations in a series of public collections worldwide:

Bente Hansen’s works are at: e.g.The National Museum, Stockholm; The Danish Arts Foundation; Designmuseum Danmark; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Palmer Museum, Pennsylvania, USA and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg. Most recently, in 2012, she exhibited at Ann Linnemann Studio Gallery in Copenhagen.

Works by Morten Løbner Espersen are at: e.g. Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Birmingham Museum of Art, US; The Danish Arts Foundation; Designmuseum Danmark; Trapholt Museum of Arts, DK; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; 
The National Museum, Stockholm;
 The Röhsska Museum, Gothenburg, Sweden. Lately he has shown at Jason Jacques Gallery in New York. In connection with his solo show, Horror Vacui, at Trapholt Museum of Art in the summer of 2012, he published the book of the same title at Rhodos publishers.



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