Contemporary Ceramics

Musée et espace de création, Keramis dispose d’un atelier de céramique et d’une résidence d’artiste. Outre le développement de projets de designers, c’est la première fois qu’une jeune céramiste est invitée dans un cadre défini. Charlotte Coquen a travaillé entre août et septembre 2017 à Keramis et le résultat de son travail est à découvrir dans l’exposition « Charlotte Coquen. Tout à l’horizontal ».

The article is about the development of the Gyeonggi International Ceramics Biennale until now. How it has changed and how it hopes to change in the future. Additionally as presenting the competition winners for 2015.

"Originally published in February 2016 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages (insert page #s). http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org . Copyright, The American Ceramic Society. Reprinted with permission."

Ceramic has been known not only as a traditional production material but also art material from the beginning of the 20th century. However, the most important progression and transformation in the field ceramic art are experienced after Second World War. This progression is observed in the artworks created by some important artists such as Hans Coper, Ruth Duckworth. These works, which showed a formalist approach at the beginning, evolves towards critical approaches in the future. Especially this critical approach has been observed in “Pop and Funk” since the late 1960’s and it continues today.
Nowadays, everything can be the material of art. In addition to the traditional materials, today art works are created with a wide variety of material such as inner oil, artist’s blood, glass, ceramic or wheat seed and these materials becomes an instrument for artists to express their feelings and to materialize ideas and meanings. At this point, ceramic material is considered by relating physical characteristics, historical ties, rich layers of meaning comes from tradition of production in the art works belongs to modern artists such as Ai Weiwei, Jeff Koons, Charless Craft. 
In these art works, the most remarkable thing is that artists destroy or broke ceramic sculpture or object. Even that this actions may be interpreted as vandalism. Is it possible to consider that the action of destruction is a process for to create the level of meaning, when it has been take into consideration the art theory of Kant that is based on “aesthetic idea” and the art theory of Danton based on “embodied meaning in the object”?

Jun Kaneko is a contemporary artist who pioneered techniques for building, firing, and glazing large-scale ceramic sculpture. In 2009 the University of Missouri's Museum of Art and Archaeology was gifted three monumental works by Kaneko: Egyptian King and Egyptian King, and 6' Dango. These three important accessions reflect the artist's interests in abstraction, color,  scale, experimentation, and open-endedness.

The emergence of contemporary impermanent ceramics is considered, using Michael Thompson's rubbish theory and Harold Becker's 'art world' concept to explore the issue of valuing impermanent art, specifically ceramics. Illustrations of artists currently locating clay-based work in the contemporary art environment are offered.

This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection of Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture, held at the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin–Madison, September 4–November 30, 2014. © 2014 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright conventions

In mid-2020, Joshua Collinson from The Ceramic School, Melbourne based social-engagement artist, Vipoo Srivilasa, and Dr. Wendy Gers, leading international curator, launched a registered charity: Ceramics for Charity.

The first ground-breaking fundraiser, held in August 2020, included an online exhibition, professionally curated by Dr. Wendy Gers, a program of speakers & demonstrators organized by Joshua Collinson, and a global fundraising raffle of art and pottery overseen by Vipoo Srivilasa.

Over 10K USD were raised & donated to international organizations that support
Black Lives Matter, Anti-Racism, Human Rights, and dignity for all.

https://www.ceramicsforcharity.com/

El Programa de Artes Plásticas del Recinto Universitario de Mayagüez de la Universidad de Puerto Rico se fundó en la década de 1960. Desde entonces, importantes artistas de la historia del arte de Puerto Rico, como Susana Herrero, Anaida Hernández, Néstor Millán, Cristina Córdova, Zuleira Soto y Eury Orsini, entre otrxs, han pasado por sus talleres. Este catálogo recoge la historia de esxs ex-alumnxs, sus logros y su relación con el RUM, su alma mater.

The exhibition Fluxus in a Bowl of Tea at the Fluxus Plus Museum in Potsdam Germany in August and September of 2012 drew parallels between the Fluxus art movement of the 1950s and the Zen influenced Tea ceremony of 16th century Japan. The exhibition featured the art of Marc Lancet and Sabine Turpeinen.

Paper in preparation for MAKING FUTURES 2015.
Presentation on Korean biennales was given in September 2015 at the Making Futures Conference in Plymouth UK. Photograph taken by Hyeyoung CHO at Gyeonggi International Ceramics Biennale 2013, Cheongju International Craft Biennale 2013 and 2015 (individual images in courtesy of artists and collectors).

Dunedin artist Marie Strauss produces a range of work in different media, marked by the intermedial nature of her practice.For Strauss, “Fashion for me is like painting, or making a meal or creating a pot – to me it’s all the same.”Through the intermedial continuum of her engagement, ‘art’ is released from traditional hierarchies and boundaries. While  locally,  perhaps,  more  routinely  associated  with  her  fashion  label  Dada  Vintage  and  shop  Dada  Manifesto,  located in Dunedin, Strauss is also a painter and ceramicist. The everyday practices of eating and dressing inflect the meaning of her ceramics (which are sculptural rather that utilitarian in nature) as well as her paintings.

Fashion within Strauss’s work as defined intermedially becomes a highly personal expression of allegiance, festivity and attachment. The play of colour and vibrancy of texture, as shifting intensities, evoke the innocent delights of childhood and an optimism about the human condition in which such mutual pleasures provide a common ground that promotes our understanding of a more utopian future. The double valence of fashion, as both a consumer non-durable and art, recalls the views of the German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin who saw in fashion, and our acquiescence to its system, a symptom of commodity fetishism in one of its more virulent forms, but also deemed it a manifestation of the human subject’s continued search and desire for a more utopian future. Fashion by its nature as ever changing expresses a dissatisfaction with the present and a belief in a better future, according to Benjamin’s formulations of its paradoxical role. The intermedial connections sustained by Marie Strauss’s project demonstrate fashion’s potential to connect the subject to the aesthetic impulse defined by Stern through his notion of vitality affects – an appreciation of life and beauty that is arguably a human right allocated to all by birth, the sign of a shared humanity that has the potential to draw us together in celebration rather than war.

The embracing of the 'craft as design' discourse in the field of Israeli ceramics has reaffirmed studio ceramics’ supposed inferiority, and while the idea of ‘craft’ is admired in contemporary art end design discourses, studio crafts such as studio ceramics continue to be marginalized. Major aspects of craft remain excluded, resulting in a very reductive approach to it. Embracing ‘amateur craft’ and the elevated value of ‘materiality’, leading agents associated with Israeli ceramics, advocate bodily gestures and materiality when these are manifested in the work of non-craftsmen, such as designers, while ignoring professional craftsmen. This paper aims to indicate the digression caused by the 'craft as design' discourse.

Keramis invite les visiteurs et les passionnés de la Faïencerie Boch Frères Keramis à découvrir les Assiettes parlantes. Cette exposition, initiée par le Musée Ariana, musée suisse de la céramique et du verre a été reprise et développée par Keramis. Près de 200 assiettes à décor imprimé légendé provenant de faïenceries belges, françaises et suisses sont exposées. Humour, caricatures, voyages, chants, détente et Histoire sont au programme de cette nouvelle exposition.
Les Assiettes parlantes sont également l’occasion d’aborder des thèmes plus larges tels que les productions publicitaires et commémoratives chez Boch Frères Keramis. Cette faïencerie réalisa en effet divers services et objets publicitaires pour elle-même mais aussi pour la Ville de La Louvière, la Famille royale, l’armée ou encore des entreprises qui seront présentés par le biais de la collection de M. et Mme Cabus-Maloteaux, généreusement donnée à Keramis.
Enfin, un troisième volet se consacre à la création contemporaine. Keramis vous présente le travail de Julie Decubber  (bijoux dans le four-bouteille n°2) , Olivia Mortier  (café des faïenciers) et Safia Hijos accompagnée d'étudiants de La Cambre qui détournent, transforment et revisitent ces productions parlantes.

Eva Bull Holte (1922-1993) was a Norwegian late-modernist artist, who had studied at the Oslo Art Academy and Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, before her debut in 1957. In 2019 the Nordic Institute of Art collaborated with RAM gallery in Oslo with an exhibition that showed Bull Holte in dialogue with contemporary artist Marthe Elise Stramrud.

20. yüzyıl ve günümüz sanatının en güçlü kavramlarından biri olan ironi, sanatçının dış dünyayı
yorumlayışında takındığı eleştirel bir tavır olarak karşımıza çıkar. Gerçeğin gizlenip tersten söylendiği
bu yaklaşımda esas amaç, söylem ya da eylemdeki çelişik noktalara dikkat çekmektir.
Uzun yıllar, retorik temelli bir kavram olarak felsefe ve edebiyatın içinde yer alan ironi,
geçtiğimiz yüzyıl başında, sanat alanına sızarak, sanatsal anlamın inşasında bir yöntem ve tavır niteliği
kazanmıştır. Özellikle, Marcel Duchamp’ın çalışmalarıyla başlayan bu eleştirel ironik dilin, estetik
kaygının yıkımında ve sanatın ontolojik yapısının değişiminde tetikleyici bir unsur olduğu söylenebilir.
Günümüzde, resimden heykel ve seramiğe, performanstan videoya değin pek çok sanat disiplininde
ironik dilin örneklerini görmek mümkündür.
20. yüzyılın ikinci yarısında formalist eğilimlerin hâkim olduğu seramik sanatı içinde eleştirel
bir dilin filizlendiğine tanık oluruz. Bu eleştirel ironik dil, 1960’lı yılların sonlarından itibaren pop ve
funk hareketi içerisinde yer alan sanatçılar tarafından geliştirilmiştir. Hareketin öncüsü Robert
Arneson’un alay ve ironi içeren çalışmalarını Birgit Jurgenssen’in ironi ve sürrealizmi birleştirdiği
işleri izler.
Günümüzde, Ai Weiwei, Keiko Fukazawa, Frenk Flemening, Penny Byrne gibi seramik
malzemenin olanaklarını kullanan sanatçıların eleştirel ironik dili, yapıtın içeriğini güçlendiren bir
tavır olarak karşımıza çıkmaya devam etmektedir.

Iran has a unique, and occasionally uneasy, relationship with the modern manifestations of its historic arts, and the contemporary ceramics landscape in Iran is marked by debates over competing ideologies of authenticity, identity, imperialism, exoticism, commercialism, nationalism, utility, and aesthetics. Potters must navigate the landscape of ceramics alongside expanding definitions of clay as a visual and conceptual medium. This article provides some brief introductory observations about the unique ways in which the contemporary and traditional terms are defined and understood in the Iranian context.

Nr. 6 of a series of publications on contemporary Norwegian craft artists, in connection with exhibitions at RAM galleri, Oslo. Texts by Joakim Borda-Pedreira and George Santayana. Astrid Sleire (b. 1961) is a ceramic artist working in a post-minimalist tendency since the 1990s. She is currently assisting professor of ceramics at the Bergen Art Academy.

Daril Fortis Tijuana B.C. se caracteriza por una vena «artesanal» erigida como forma de producción para el comercio turístico, donde la confluencia de representaciones de mexicanidad traducida en toda clase de artesanías provenientes de diversas partes del territorio nacional integran la oferta de suvenires de los negocios asentados en el camino hacia el cruce fronterizo Tijuana-San Diego conocido como «la línea», misma que da cuenta de una apropiación de técnicas y simbología que debido al contexto produce objetos intermedios entre «lo mexicano» y lo global.

This book investigates how British contemporary artists who work with clay have managed, in the space of a single generation, to take ceramics from niche-interest craft to the pristine territories of the contemporary art gallery. This development has been accompanied (and perhaps propelled) by the kind of critical discussion usually reserved for the "higher" discipline of sculpture. Ceramics is now encountering and colliding with sculpture, both formally and intellectually. Laura Gray examines what this means for the old hierarchies between art and craft, the identity of the potter, and the character of a discipline tied to a specific material but wanting to participate in critical discussions that extend far beyond clay.

A NY ART EXHIBITION WORTHY OF THE NAME IS A KIND of momentary petri dish of human passion and ingenuity, both past and present. The objects on hand, each representing a specific time, place and skill set, provide glimpses of the intricate byways of art and its history that are far more intimate than those provided by either books or museums. The presentation of these objects-their arrangement and juxtaposition within the individual booths-often illuminates the incessant movement of artistic ideas and influences, and inevitably speaks volumes about a dealer's visual, curatorial and marketing instincts. These elements interact with particular force at Terra Natura where the material is often superb, the cultural range close to comprehensive and the competition for eye-catching booth design keen, especially among potters operating in the same field. Terra Natura was a singular quest for me, having studied and reviewed individual solo shows and watching ceramic shows put up annually that

Minimal art raised a stimulating discussion back then in the 1960s. As theorist Michael Fried put it: Minimal art was "nothing other than a plea for a new genre of theatre; and theatre now is negation of art" (Fried, 1967 p 125). According to Fried, Minimalist objects (Fried has called "Literalist Art") are neither paintings nor sculpture, but rather a situation that takes into account the actions of its manufacture, the activities that have preceded it and, to a great extent, the presence of the spectator. This description envelops important information: First, Minimalist objects derive their meaning through the encounter with the observer; second, that particular characteristic transforms them to a theatrical situation; and third, objects placed in a space can function as a theatrical situation. Visual art is perceived here as a process of assimilation of the viewer in the artwork while in theatre this assimilation does not exist and the viewer is left out of what is happening on stage. That is; when there is awareness to the act of viewing - theatricality occurs.

The writing of the prologue for this article was made possible by a two-week trip to China's pottery districts. The culinary generosity of our host at the third conference of the International Ceramics Magazines Editors Association (ICMEA), included the head of the roast duck with its eye gazing from the plate, spiced fingers of chicken, chopped meat served with bones, cartilage and skin and trembling cubes of clotted blood. What was for my dear Chinese friends daily, or delicatessen food, was, for me, suitable for photography but by no means perceived as appropriate for putting in my mouth. What is the despicable and what is abject?Despicable: contemptible, despised, sleazy, grovelling, worthless, wretched, snotty, slavish, menial, picayune. The despicable consists of those elements, especially of the body, that threaten to violate the feeling of cleanliness or adequacy, which are perceived as not pure and unworthy to be displayed, for a public debate: discharge, feces and urine, vomit, blood, internal body parts, corpse, incest or pedophilia.The term 'abject art' was used by the philosopher Julia M Kristeva in her book from 1980, Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection. The concept of 'abject' indicates what was removed from the body as a discharge and was made 'other'. Kristeva describes the "experience of being" as a dialectical experience, so fraught with internal tensions that sexuality and fear control them in different ways. By doing so, she exposes the human conflict regarding the abject: what came out of me is indeed despicable but what came out of me was in me and so is part of who I am. Dealing with this conflict makes abject the junction of the phobia, obsession and perversion. Religion has defined abject as impurity that requires a complete set of prohibitions and purification ceremonies that take place in all religions and societies.