Poetics and Materiality II

Poetics and materiality – material choice and its language in ceramic art.
With the support of the Folkuniversitetsföreningen.

Tjörnedala Art Gallery presents Poetics & Materiality II—an investigation of the object's narrative ability and the material's language. In the exhibition, Mårten Medbo's sculpture series Taxonomi is shown together with Irene Nordli's installation Into the woods.

Mårten Medbo – Taxonomy

My way into ceramics was via an apprenticeship at a pottery. This means that turning has been central to both my understanding of the ceramics field in general and to my own identity as a ceramicist. Despite this fact, I stopped spinning for a long period. I found it difficult to implement the technique based on my artistic ambitions. I had moved away from the ceramic mill tradition where the turning is the centerpiece.

As a doctoral student in the artistic research field, I became interested in my own relationship with the drägen in particular. Why didn't I see an artistic possibility in the craft technique I probably master best? That's what I wanted to find out, and the series of works presented here is a station on the way in the exploration of the artistic possibilities of drawing.

The series is entitled Taxonomy and thematically, the work deals with how human curiosity has come to be manifested within the Western tradition of ideas. About how man in the name of science collects, classifies and exposes the surrounding world with the ultimate goal of taking control of the same world. A control that in our time has turned to its opposite.

In the work, gravity is also clearly reminded. My way of working allows me to subject my objects to gravity in their freshly twisted plastic state. I simply hang them when they are still soft. The objects are then allowed to continue to hang during the glaze firing, which means that the glazes further enhance the sense of gravity. In this series, I have chosen to work in a limited color scale in black and white. The objects are made of stoneware.

Mårten Medbo (b. 1964, Järfälla) is an artist/ceramist based in Katrineholm. He is trained at Konstfack's line for glass and ceramics. In 2016, he received his doctorate as the first in Sweden in the research subject of arts and crafts at HDK, University of Gothenburg. Medbo currently works as an adjunct professor of ceramics at Konstfack. He has had solo exhibitions at, among others, Galleri Berg and Galleri Larsen & Warner in Stockholm, Galleri Thomassen in Gothenburg and Galerie NeC in Paris. Medbo is also represented in collections at the National Museum, the Rhösska Museum as well as private and public collections in Europe and the USA.


Irene Nordli – Into the woods

The installation Into the woods consists of manufactured ceramic sculptures and found forms in wood. My sculptural works in ceramics alternate between the amorphous and the figurative. Snail-like and spongy plants merge with body fragments and organs. The ceramics move towards an increasingly high degree of abstraction. The material is shaped, transformed and united into organic sculptural assemblages. The works can be seen as being absorbed by their own materiality.

The ceramic works are connected with roots, branches and stumps to form a whole where both floor and ceiling are used to activate the exhibition space. I want the installation to offer a contemplative place where the viewer is given the opportunity to discover and experience my works physically as well as sensually. As if you come to a place you have not been before. Indoors but outdoors. Natural but unnatural. A place that is whole but composed of parts.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)

Irene Nordli (b. 1967, Oslo) lives and works in Oslo and Heestrand in Bohuslän. She is educated at the University of the Arts in Bergen (1995) and has worked as a professor at the University of the Arts in Oslo (KHiO), department of Arts and Crafts, until 2019. Nordli has had a number of solo exhibitions at galleries and institutions such as Kunstnerforbundet and RAM Galleri in Oslo, Galleri Format in Malmö, Akershus Kunstsenter in Lillestrøm and Lillehammer Kunstmuseum. Nordli has also participated in several group exhibitions in Norway as well as abroad. Public works by Nordli include Don't be a Stranger outside Asker Kulturhus and Moonlight at Halden Prison. Her work has been purchased by a number of collections and museums. In 2017, Nordli received the Kunsthåndverksprize from Bildende Kunstneres Hjelpefond (BKH).