HUMAN MATTERS Ann Linnemann Aug-Sep 2019


HUMAN MATTERS - Ann Linnemann DK
Exhibition 15 August – 7 September 2019
Human as a focal point - a universe of dreams and thinking.
Human and material - body movement, form language and human relationships are just some of the key words for this exhibition's new and older pieces, all of which revolve around being human in a more or less abstract way.

The exhibition presents works from various time periods and thus showing several years of work with human as the main theme.
Just as changeable as the time and situation they have appeared from.

The pieces spring from ideas about dreaming of and looking out into the world and looking into oneself, of considering expressions and impressions of people, body language and movement combined with natural and cultural relations.
They show the imprints of time on the body, suggestive and more directly readable considerations of the individual, moods, states.

The pieces are about the many situations that human can see them self in - based on the physical form, the torso with more or less focus on and clarification of form lines, details, fragments. They abstract over emotions such as social relationships, community, independence, dialogue, poetry and eroticism.
It is a kind of diary, perhaps autobiographical, but also fiction and mind play.
Each piece has its history, a kind of set of rules, a method used as a starting point for this particular work.
Body Form is a study of super simple shapes, hand-thrown in porcelain and stoneware, and minimally altered,..
- and Body Blue continues the idea, but in a collaboration with a British colleague, Paul Scott, has been given cobalt blue silkscreen prints from past everyday tableware in the porcelain industry - as a social-political commentary on the relocation/ closing of ceramic industrial factories in Europe.


Body Wood and Body Tang's wood-fired forms hold the marks of flames and ashes.

In recent years, the fascination has focused on picturesque depictions on ceramic form.
Views and Forms of Forest refer to conceptual themes inspired by paintings from the Renaissance to now - and examine painterly qualities of ceramic glaze.

Nature reproduction, pattern and ornamentation can be experienced here as illusions appearing from different realities.
The trees of Central Park in New York edged the thousands of shiny windows of high-rise buildings.

- An evening in Copenhagen reflected the shadows of the city's trees and the blue sea from the world of dreams - on the city's facades.
The majority of the latest works are painted with glazes and depict imaginary landscapes from the memory. The views through windows and combinations of windows and other openings, cultural landscape and nature scenes.
They are a kind of journey into the world and into the body, stories and poems without words.

MATERIAL QUALITIES
The complex lies in the picturesque possibilities of ceramic glazes and differences that occur when the 'colours' finally are to be effected by firing, while in the painting process colourless and 'invisible', a greyish chemical mass 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, layers, interaction and densities.
The organic and cylindrical forms are hand-thrown porcelain, painted with alkaline ash glazes, fired at 1280C.

ANN LINNEMANN (b. 1957) apprenticeship/potters certificate, Kähler Ceramics Studio, Næstved 1979-83; ceramic designer, Denmark's Design School (now: KADK, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Design), Copenhagen 1983-89; Research Scholar Arizona State University USA 1993/94.
Collections and exhibitions in Danmark and abroad: Danish Art Foundation, Trapholt Art Museum; Design Museum Danmark; CLAY Ceramic Museum; New Carlsberg Foundation; Næstved Museum; OJD-Fonden;, International Ceramic Research Center; Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, USA; Banff Arts Centre, Canada; Australia National University of Art Canberra; Arizona University Art Museum, USA; Lacoste Gallery, MA USA; Scottish Gallery, UK.

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.

Previous pieces - 1995..


Grateful thanks to The Danish Art Foundation for project funding in 2019.

BIOGRAPHY – Link: Biography - Ann Linnemann
See more images.. SCULPTURAL FORM AND IMAGE