EARTH
Lea Mi Engholm & Vinni Hedegaard Frederiksen
Exhibition 16 January – 29 February 2020
About looking at the raw material CLAY of our planet - seeing into the ground.
The exhibition is an aesthetic tale of the uncontrollable forces that manifest when the elements of nature are given space. Impurities in the clay are maintained and exploited. Sensuality appears of the soil.
The exhibitors investigate the elemental and basic material of our blue planet. From the material CLAY, originating from the Danish ground, extremes in ceramic processes are explored.
LEA MI ENGHOLM challenges the properties of the clay, where a well-developed curious investigative approach characterizes her works that appear to have coincidentally emerged as a natural process or a play with material and method.
VINNI HEDEGAARD FREDERIKSEN has philosophical thinking and sensory memory as the basis for her ceramic work, which revolves around locality and material as a natural raw material to support a particular story and idea.
OUR TIME is for materiality, sensuality and sustainable thinking, not just to analyze how industry and the consumer can save nature's resources, but also to look down into the earth, to explore the valuable raw material that is said to have created the first humans.
CLAY is found everywhere on Earth and consists of variable elements that depend on where on the globe it is deposited. Traders and ceramists travelled around the world to find new materials that could enhance the home's functional products or aesthetics. Ceramists were the first alchemists and chemists who constantly researched to transform cheap raw materials into valuable products. Porcelain was called the White Gold.IN THE DANISH GROUND, the clay contains especially much chalk and iron.
Clay is malleable and plastic, but becomes hard and weather resistant when fired at high temperature. In the farmer's houses are used unfired, porous and hard-fired brick, crude clay walls and floors, depending on the need for durability, moisture, heat, and insulation.
TODAY, clay is used for and in many products from bricks, concrete and tiles to new sharp knives, industrial products and contemporary art.
There is research into new potential properties and qualities of the material.
We are moving forward in the name of development, and fortunately, occasionally still look back on the earlier wise use of natural resources, where now modern architects rediscover clay and straw walls, local materials for 3D-printing etc.
AGAIN, IT HAS BECOME IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER and use the ingenious inventions and tradition-rich experiences. It is sustainable to find clever new ways through old paths, basic and artistic ideas to the understanding of nature.
Lea Mi Engholm
My approach and thinking about the work process itself has basically been the same for a long time.
It is a curious and investigative work process in which I search and challenge the properties of the clay.
I always like to come across a detail or technique that I choose to pursue. Along the way, perhaps another detail arises, which is worth investigating.
In this way I move around and dive into the material substance.
The special and 'unusual' of my works is that I base the material on a way in which the works' more or less' make themselves'.I give the process a push in a given direction and then let it live its own life. The method and the process create the work, but I am the one who chooses when the process stops and the work is done.
The way the material is handled captures the viewer's curiosity about the ceramic.
The pieces contain something recognizable, foreign and rough, but at the same time something cultivated. Pieces that, through structures and details, tell a story about the material CLAY.
My inspiration, background and references are simply material and work process. Most often it is through the work process that the idea for the work arises.The sculptural objects are of stoneware, earthenware and porcelain.
(Photos of previous exhibitions and pieces)
LEA MI ENGHOLM (b. 1977) educated at Designskolen-Kolding 2001-06, study-year HDK Högskolen for Design og Kunsthåndværk, Göteborg, Sweden. SELECTED EXHIBITIONS Sophienholm, Kgs. Lyngby; Johannes Larsen Museet, Kerteminde; KunstCenter Silkeborg Bad, 2019. Clay Keramikmuseum Danmark 2018. SAK Kunstbygning, Svendborg 2019,18,17. Versus, Clay Keramikmuseum Danmark, 2017. En bolig til planten, Officinet, København & Odsherred 2016. Charlottenborg Forårsudstilling, Biennalen for Kunsthåndværk og Design, Carlsberg Byen; NNCA, Grand Palais, Paris 2015. Ann Linnemann Galleri, København, Mesterværker 2018, Intensity m Hans Munck Andersen 2013. GRANTS & AWARDS Statens Kunstfond, projektstøtte 2019, arbejdslegat 2018,17.16,15, præmiering af udstillinger Talisman 2017, Meditations 2012. Herman Madsens og Charlotte Henriksens Mindelegat 2018. Annie & Otto Johs. Detlefs´Keramikpris til Versus 2016. Medlem af kunstnergruppen Versus og Den Fynske Forårsudstilling. www.leamiengholm.dk
Vinni Hedegaard Frederiksen
I collect raw materials from the Danish ground. Soil and clay formed during the last ice age as well as volcanic ash collected in mole graves.
I research these unprocessed materials in a ceramic process and apply them to a processed clay, stoneware and porcelain. Impurities in the clay are maintained and exploited.
It is an aesthetic story about the borderland between the controlled action and the uncontrollable forces, which are reflected when natural elements are set free. A poetic perception of the raw basic soil.
In my childhood, I spent countless hours on a tractor with my dad.Here I loved looking down into the newly plowed soil.
The plow cuts through the black unprocessed earth, turning soil and producing new forms. Clean shiny surfaces occurs as a contrast to the raw land. Powerful, but with exalted calm. Repetition after repetition. The black earth with shades verging on the infinite.
The works are moving in a borderland between the earth's life force and autumn dark melancholy end.
A memory of looking into the ground. During the break from the complex, the plow field has its sensible justification. Images of the memory of the earth, with references to the beginning. This experience of the world's materiality is the starting point for a series of new works.
In recent years, my pieces have been concept and material based. I am now concerned with a balance between the design language, the material's own conditions and the presence of the hand in the finished work. Maintaining an immediacy in the finished piece. The works have been prepared through a physical dialogue with the material - where I have repeated the same movements over and over again.
They refer to the basic, bordering on the existential. Asking questions for today's complex society.
A sensuous abstraction of a personal recollection.
(Photos of previous exhibitions and pieces)
VINNI HEDEGAARD FREDERIKSEN (b. 1975) educated at Designskolen Kolding, 1999-2004; Edinburgh College of Art, 2003. SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 'Lad leret tale` Projektrum AAKA 2019. CLAY Danmarks Keramikmuseum, Den levende krukke – 'Nøjsom', 2019. REFORM18 Design Biennale, Munkeruphus, The Silence of Everyday – Repetition of Materiality; Officinet, 'Game of Whispers' 2018. ATRIUM - 'Rå nøjsomhed', Kongegårdren, Korsør; Ny Kastet, 2017. Biennalen for Kunsthåndværk og Design, Museumsbygningen, LER, 2017. Officinet, Bredgade, 'Landskabning', 2016. Biennalen for Kunsthåndværk og Design 2015 'Stilhed'. Kunstnernes Sommerudstilling KS15, Janus Bygningen, 2015. KP14, Kunsthal Århus, 'Plovfure', 2014.
Grateful thanks to The Danish Art Foundation for project funding in 2020.
