25 march 2024, Wouter van den Eijkel
Franzis Engels reveals the versatility of ceramics
With High Fired II, Franzis Engels is once again showcasing the versatility of ceramics. Engels has brought together seven ceramicists who create completely different styles of work – from sculptures that make you think you're looking at a canvas with folds and anthropomorphic assemblages to masks and flowers – but all of whom master the craft down to the very last detail.
Franzis Engels was fully aware of this, so she decided two years ago to organise a group exhibition with eight ceramicists called High Fired, a reference to the firing temperature of porcelain at around 1300 degrees Celsius. She didn't fully focus her gallery on ceramics, but was committed to creating a ceramic exhibition every other year. In the second edition, she is showcasing the work of seven Dutch and Belgian ceramicists. For the exhibition's composition, she keeps lists of ceramicists she admires and selects based on “visual qualities and perfect mastery of the craft”.
Engels also succeeded in attracting some major names from the ceramics world, such as Belgian artist AnneMarie Laureys. Her work is considered groundbreaking due to its anthropomorphic forms. Laureys constructs her sculptures from a series of pots thrown on the wheel. The walls of still wet and soft pots are malleable with hand and finger grips. Laureys brings together different elements in compositions of volume, skin, texture and colour.
Joke Raes also demonstrates mastery of the craft and visual qualities. Several of her masks are on display. She not only pays attention to everything beneath the surface, behind the mask, but also has a keen eye for overview and composition. She imbues her masks with an organic visual language, a sort of Amazon rainforest teeming with rampant, writhing nature where humans are only one species amidst hundreds of thousands of others.
Cecil Kemperink approaches ceramics from yet another angle. For her, a background in dance and music was the starting point. Kemperink focuses on a single shape: the ring. She constructs her sculptures from numerous rings that interlock like chainmail. But she does so for a different reason. For Kemperink, it's about the sound and movement a sculpture makes when you pick it up and move it. For this reason, she strings together different types and sizes of rings, with each size and type of clay producing a different sound. When brought together in a sculpture, it creates a sound composition when picked up and moved.
