Branch Stump - Exhibition May 2011



Branch Stump
Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl DK
Exhibition 5 - 28 May 2011
What can a branch stump talk about? - Why make it in ceramics? - What wondering does it start? - And when is it even a branch stump.

Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl: “The turning point of this exhibition is the branch stump. Not the actual branch, but the stump.
It is about the section, the part – which in itself holds the whole form of the tree, that it once came from. The physical presence of the tree is – in competition with the cat or dog – probably one of the visual forms, that we are first of all acquainted with in our life. An archetype. With time the root-trunk-crown-iconography change radically for most people; and for some the tree merely stays a tree. A tree is a tree – a branch is a branch. That’s it.

The direct impression of the anonymous branch stump, that the cast form in clay gives, is here set in a dialogue with various modelled variations of it. Both in the pure meeting of the form and with the surface patterns set in play.

The materials, that the objects are made from, place them solidly in a non-nature-sphere. Like the ceramic figures they depend upon, that the tactility, colour and applied ornamental actualities transform the easily recognisable into an open world of imagination.”
Photo of pieces: Ole Akhøj - Photo of exhibition: Ann Linnemann


In recent years, Martin Bodilsen Kaldahls exhibition activities have included the exhibitions at The Danish Museum of Art Craft and Design in Copenhagen: 'The digital clay', 2008 and "END" (English/Norwegian/Danish exhibition group) in 2007.