Ann Linnemann Gallery: March 2017

VIEWS - Ann Linnemann
Exhibition 17 March – 22 April 2017

Nature meets culture - landscapes, trees, windows, views.
The exhibition pieces Views and Forms of Forest refer to cultural and conceptual themes, reflecting painting from the Renaissance till now - and examine the picturesque qualities of ceramic glazes.
Nature representation, pattern and ornamentation are illusions based on different realities.

VIEWS - Wild Views
The motifs are derived from visual impressions on travels to various places in the world. Everywhere nature breaks out and speaks of the country's culture and history.

This meeting of cultural and visual experiences has left its imprint as reflections on the surface. The horizon draws a line around the form - and the story is experienced spatially from many angles.

- An evening in Copenhagen reflects the shadows of the large trees and a bright blue sea. A house facade in Italy at sunset reveals details of the window shutters in long abstract formations. The Middle East is compressed at the Sinai Peninsular in vertically striped rock formations. Australia's endless plains are framed by straight lines. The Amazon river mirrors the dense leaf foliage of the jungle behind the religious mysticism.

FORMS OF FOREST - Fragments
The rhythm of trees creates geometric lines. The naturalistic breaks with the systematic.

The perspective is dissolved into distance and size. The colours are balanced, nuanced and contrasted. The seasons are experienced in simple colour combination and pattern.

Consciously and unconsciously creating new stories based on the landscapes of the forest.
The dreamy and inconcrete are hiding in the physical realities of the object.

RENAISSANCE
Renaissance artists mastered painting the nature and landscape as a background in the religious narrative. Some exhibition pieces relate directly to these backgrounds and the method's impressionistic painting, while others reflect on the concept, where two different visions or world views are combined.

PAINTING BACKGROUNDS
The horizontal and vertical meet in my motives. For this exhibition, I have concentrated on the landscape and forest where the two planes are combined with a third geometric element, windows or 'views'.
Each theme and motif have been developed through prior research.

Previous pieces refer to Pompeian illusion painting, which has developed into studies of the Italian Renaissance masters and Golden Age painting, landscapes by Vilhelm Hammershøj, Claus Johansen, Théodore Rousseau, David Hockney and many more.

Many motives have derived from personal travels and investigation of a country's history and culture.

MATERIAL CHARACTERISTICS
The complex lies in the picturesque possibilities of ceramic glazes and differences that occur when the 'colour' finally has to be effected by firing, while in the painting process colourless and 'invisible', a greyish chemical pulp which does not float with the paint-brush as oil paint, but rather reacts as in fresco-painting - that is, apart from the unpredictable in the later melting of the colours.

All pieces are glaze painted in multiple layers and then fired several times, until the desired result is achieved.
It is a slow and reflective process where the final work occurs in a constant dialogue with the natural characteristics of the materials, glaze recipes, interaction and densities.
The organic and cylindrical forms are hand-thrown porcelain, painted with alkaline ash glazes, fired at 1280C.

ANN LINNEMANN has studied and traveled all over the world, from Japan to The US and Canada, she is recognized for her professional commitment and ceramic work. She has presented international lectures and workshops, including a guest presentation at the NCECA conference, USA. An increasing interest in the development of ceramics, promotion and international exchange has involved project management of symposiums, seminars as a director of international Ceramic Center in Denmark, exhibitions and gallery activities.
She lives in Copenhagen and works in her studio and gallery, Ann Linnemann Gallery, specializing in contemporary ceramic art, presenting exhibitions by Danish and international artists.
Her art work concentrates on ceramic sculpture and glaze-painted vessel forms with references to historical themes and concepts. She has an interest in the secret layers of meaning. The dreamy and intangible concealed in the object's physical reality, and a dialogue with the viewer through the stories underlying the actual presence. The form language may be complex, often with alteration and further processing of hand-thrown basic form, where a symbiosis of idea, function, form, material and throwing technique is essential.

Grateful thanks to The Danish Arts Foundation’s Committee for Crafts and Design Project Funding of the Ann Linnemann Gallery in 2017.