LAYERS / FOLDS
Ceramics by Gabriele Künne
15 / 02 / 23 bis 15 / 04 / 23
Gabriele Künne has developed a tableware landscape for Zagreus Projekte that moves between utility ceramics and artistic ceramic objects. Ceramics as one of the oldest cultural techniques is repeatedly questioned by the artist in many ways. Traditionally and historically located in the practical, decorative and cultic spheres, artistic ceramics developed away from the vessel, the bowl, the cult figure at the beginning of the 20th century. It is no coincidence that the term ceramics comes from the ancient Greek:
keramos (κέραμος) – durable forms made of clay by firing, which were produced in the Athenian district of Kerameikos. Hollow moulds have always been the basis of utilitarian ceramics – but also of artistic ceramics, which must be treated similarly for processing reasons.
Gabriele Künne also works with hollow forms, but vases and vessels are quoted, satirised, the mechanisms of perception questioned. In addition to various hollow forms, she also works with surfaces that are rolled out evenly and then layered, folded, thrown and beaten. Traces of work remain visible and reveal the genesis, which moves between precise planning, processual articulation and so-called chance. A deep concentration on the possible result and a quick action determine the folding, the shaping, the object.
For the menu, the artist has made two sets:
Phiale (from the ancient Greek φιάλη phiálē, German ‘bowl’ is a flat sacrificial bowl without handles or feet in ancient Greece).
Patera (an equally shallow bowl used as a cultic vessel by the Romans in antiquity).
These sets are now topped and basted with a sequence of dishes in the Zagreus project.
Also on view is an artistic work, LAGER, which shows a repertoire of ceramic objects. For Gabriele Künne, abstract objects and object systems whose indeterminate and indeterminable forms develop out of urban experience play an essential role.